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Building Classifier Ensembles for B-Cell Epitope Prediction

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Immunoinformatics

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 1184))

Abstract

Identification of B-cell epitopes in target antigens is a critical step in epitope-driven vaccine design, immunodiagnostic tests, and antibody production. B-cell epitopes could be linear, i.e., a contiguous amino acid sequence fragment of an antigen, or conformational, i.e., amino acids that are often not contiguous in the primary sequence but appear in close proximity within the folded 3D antigen structure. Numerous computational methods have been proposed for predicting both types of B-cell epitopes. However, the development of tools for reliably predicting B-cell epitopes remains a major challenge in immunoinformatics.

Classifier ensembles a promising approach for combining a set of classifiers such that the overall performance of the resulting ensemble is better than the predictive performance of the best individual classifier. In this chapter, we show how to build a classifier ensemble for improved prediction of linear B-cell epitopes. The method can be easily adapted to build classifier ensembles for predicting conformational epitopes.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH GM066387) and by Edward Frymoyer Chair of Information Sciences and Technology at Pennsylvania State University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt

    Yasser EL-Manzalawy

  2. College of Information Sciences and Technology, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, 301A Information Sciences and Technology Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Vasant Honavar

Authors
  1. Yasser EL-Manzalawy
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  2. Vasant Honavar
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vasant Honavar .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

    Rajat K. De

  2. Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

    Namrata Tomar

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EL-Manzalawy, Y., Honavar, V. (2014). Building Classifier Ensembles for B-Cell Epitope Prediction. In: De, R., Tomar, N. (eds) Immunoinformatics. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1184. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1115-8_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1115-8_15

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  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-1114-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-1115-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Protocols

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