Prediction of strong antigenic determinant of seminalplasmin and ribonuclease from the amino acid sequence.

It has been reported earlier [Hopp, T.P. & Woods, K.R. (1981) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. US 78, 3824-3828] that the antigenic determinants of a protein can be delineated by examining the average local hydrophilicity values along the peptide chain. I have used this method to predict the strong antigenic determinants of two proteins, seminalplasmin and ribonuclease, of known sequence. In the former case, the N-terminal segment 1-14, and in the latter case the segments 27-38 and 80-86, are predicted to possess the antigenic determinants of the two proteins. Experimental verification already exists for the former case.