Natural antibodies are frequently elicited to recognize diverse protein surfaces, where the sequence features of the epitopes are frequently indistinguishable from those of nonepitope protein surfaces. It is not clearly understood how the paratopes are able to recognize sequence-wise featureless epitopes and how a natural antibody repertoire with limited variants can recognize seemingly unlimited protein antigens foreign to the host immune system. In this work, computational methods were used to predict the functional paratopes with the 3D antibody variable domain structure as input. The predicted functional paratopes were reasonably validated by the hot spot residues known from experimental alanine scanning measurements. The functional paratope (hot spot) predictions on a set of 111 antibody-antigen complex structures indicate that aromatic, mostly tyrosyl, side chains constitute the major part of the predicted functional paratopes, with short-chain hydrophilic residues forming the minor portion of the predicted functional paratopes. These aromatic side chains interact mostly with the epitope main chain atoms and side-chain carbons. The functional paratopes are surrounded by favorable polar atomistic contacts in the structural paratope-epitope interfaces; more that 80% these polar contacts are electrostatically favorable and about 40% of these polar contacts form direct hydrogen bonds across the interfaces. These results indicate that a limited repertoire of antibodies bearing paratopes with diverse structural contours enriched with aromatic side chains among short-chain hydrophilic residues can recognize all sorts of protein surfaces, because the determinants for antibody recognition are common physicochemical features ubiquitously distributed over all protein surfaces.protein antigenic site | interface hot spot | paratope prediction | epitope prediction | functional epitope I t is incompletely understood as to how functional antibodies can almost always be elicited against unlimited possibilities of protein antigens from a limited repertoire of antibodies. Antibodies provide protection against foreign protein antigens by recognizing the antigen proteins with exquisite specificity and remarkable affinity, but the principles underlying the antibody affinity and specificity remain elusive. Consequently, current antibody discoveries are by and large limited by the uncontrollable animal immune systems (1) or by the recombinant antibody libraries with relatively infinitesimal coverage of the vast combinatorial sequence space in antibody-antigen interaction interfaces (2). In developing the efficacy of a therapeutic antibody, optimizing the affinity and specificity of the antibody-antigen interaction mostly relies on selecting and screening from a large pool of random candidates. As antibodies are becoming the most prominent class of protein therapeutics (3), a better understanding of the principles governing antibody affinity and specificity will facilitate in understanding humoral immunity and in developing novel ...

This longitudinal cohort study indicates that excess body weight is involved in the transition from healthy HBV carrier state to HCC and liver-related death among men.

BackgroundIt is unclear whether germline breast cancer susceptibility gene mutations affect breast cancer related outcomes. We wanted to evaluate mutation patterns in 20 breast cancer susceptibility genes and correlate the mutations with clinical characteristics to determine the effects of these germline mutations on breast cancer prognosis.MethodsThe study cohort included 480 ethnic Chinese individuals in Taiwan with at least one of the six clinical risk factors for hereditary breast cancer: family history of breast or ovarian cancer, young age of onset for breast cancer, bilateral breast cancer, triple negative breast cancer, both breast and ovarian cancer, and male breast cancer. PCR-enriched amplicon-sequencing on a next generation sequencing platform was used to determine the germline DNA sequences of all exons and exon-flanking regions of the 20 genes. Protein-truncating variants were identified as pathogenic.ResultsWe detected a 13.5% carrier rate of pathogenic germline mutations, with BRCA2 being the most prevalent and the non-BRCA genes accounting for 38.5% of the mutation carriers. BRCA mutation carriers were more likely to be diagnosed of breast cancer with lymph node involvement (66.7% vs 42.6%; P = 0.011), and had significantly worse breast cancer specific outcomes. The 5-year disease-free survival was 73.3% for BRCA mutation carriers and 91.1% for non-carriers (hazard ratio for recurrence or death 2.42, 95% CI 1.29–4.53; P = 0.013). After adjusting for clinical prognostic factors, BRCA mutation remained an independent poor prognostic factor for cancer recurrence or death (adjusted hazard ratio 3.04, 95% CI 1.40–6.58; P = 0.005). Non-BRCA gene mutation carriers did not exhibit any significant difference in cancer characteristics or outcomes compared to those without detected mutations. Among the risk factors for hereditary breast cancer, the odds of detecting a germline mutation increased significantly with having bilateral breast cancer (adjusted odds ratio 3.27, 95% CI 1.64–6.51; P = 0.0008) or having more than one risk factor (odds ratio 2.07, 95% CI 1.22–3.51; P = 0.007).ConclusionsWithout prior knowledge of the mutation status, BRCA mutation carriers had more advanced breast cancer on initial diagnosis and worse cancer-related outcomes. Optimal approach to breast cancer treatment for BRCA mutation carriers warrants further investigation.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12885-018-4229-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.