III. RECOGNITION OF THE ‘SURFACE‐SIMULATION’ SYNTHETIC ANTIGENIC STIES

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Abstract
The antigenic sites of lysozyme are composed of spatially adjacent surface residues that are mostly distant in sequence (i.e. discontinuous sites). For synthetic mimicking of the sites, the concept of ''surface-stimulation'' synthesis was introduced, by which the binding site residues are linked directly via peptide bonds with appropriate spacing and directionality into a single peptide which does not exist in the protein but mimics a surface region of it. T cell recognition of the surface-simulation synthetic antigenic sites was explored in a mouse strain. B10.BR, that is a high responder to lysozyme. The discontinuous antigenic sites of lysozyme also had the capacity to stimulate proliferation of T cells driven by native lysozyme in long-term cultures. Thus, in addition to the 4 continuous T sites recently reported, T cell recognition of lysozyme also involves discontinuous sites. Contrary to a long-held impression, T cell recognition is not restricted only to sequence features, but can also be directed to protein discontinuous surface areas of high conformational dependency.

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