T Cell Epitopes and Thyroid Peroxidase

Investigations of immune responses to exogenous antigens suggest that antibodies tend to interact with conformational, non-linear regions of polypeptides whereas T cells recognize short, lenear amino acid sequences of denatured antigen in association with MHC molecules. Further, detailed analyses of peptides stimulatory for T cells have indicated that such T cell “epitopes” have characteristic patterns of amino acids which may be predicted according to the algorithms of Rothbard [1] or Berzofsky [2].