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Introduction

Eukaryotic pathogens

Eukaryotic pathogen (EukPaths) have divergent phylogenetic lineages including fungi and parasites that have evolved the capacity to infect humans and a wide range of animals. Although pathogenic lifestyles have evolved repeatedly in EukPaths and indicated unique molecular processes to infect host, emerging evidences have shown that EukPaths share common features of pathogenicity. For example, Eukpaths usually utilize equivalent host-targeting signals and deliver virulence products including proteins to different host cells thereby disrupting the host pathways. However, how EukPaths infect and colonize humans and/or animals and the molecular mechanisms that underpin these processes continue to challenge scientists. Well known examples are the diseases important to the public health of the world, such as malaria, toxoplasmasis and trypanosomiasis, which are caused by Plasmodium, Toxoplasma and Trypanosoma parasite, respectively.

T-cell epitope

T-cell plays a central role in mediating the host adaptive immune response capable of participating in defense aganist pathogen infections. To develop polypeptide vaccines, it is particularly important to understand the mechanism of how pathogen-immune interaction occurs, of which involves the identification of pathogen-derived antigen epitopes specific for targeting the host's CD4 and CD8 T-cells. However, the identification of antigen epitopes is a challenging task due to the complexity of antigen-specific recognition and activation. Bioinformatics analysis such as machine learning algorithm with respect to predicting T-cell epitopes has become the most common method, including computational prediciton of T-cell responses to different pathogen epitopes. The current implementation of CD8TCEI-EukPath tool allows the user to predict the CD8 T-cell epitopes by means of inputing peptide sequences. In order to obtain high-confident predicitons, we also privide large peptide-coding libraries based on previous mass spectrometry (MS) peptidome data of some important EukPaths that can be downloaded at here.

Immune response process

Once a successful infection established, eukaryotic pathogens such as protozal parasites can generate various excretory products (EPs), which include the excretory antigens. T-cell epitopes are peptides derived from excretory protein antigens and can be recognized by the T-cell receptor (TCR) when bind to the MHC molecules located on the face of antigen presenting cell (APC). TCR expressed by CD8 T-cells is CD8 coreceptor, which can bind to the MHC I and recognize antigen peptide presented by MHC I molecules; TCR expressed by CD4 T-cells is CD4 coreceptor, which can bind to the MHC II and recognize antigen peptide presented by MHC II molecules.