Someone requested IBM PC software for predicting T and B cell epitopes.
Menendez-Arias and Rodriguez wrote a program in BASIC called EPIPLOT
which uses several published algorithms to do just this. The program
was described in CABIOS 6:101-105 (1990) and is available from the
University of Houston server. You can get it by e-mail by sending the
following:
mail gene-server at menudo.uh.edu
Subject: send dos epiplot.uue
You, of course, then need to UUDECODE it. The program is compiled already.
I have used the program and found it satisfactory. Several caveats apply.
The most important is that the algorithms for predicting epitopes are very
crude now. They tend to be overly sensitive, ie, they do predict most epitopes
but they predict many more than are later shown to be real. I think there
will be better ways of predicting epitopes as more data about natural epitopes
is accumulated.
