Fundamentals and Methods for T- and B-Cell Epitope Prediction

Figure 3

MHC molecule binding groove. The figure depicts the molecular surface as seen by the TCR of representative MHC I and II molecules. Note how the binding groove of the MHC I molecule is closed but that of MHC II is open. As a result, MHC I molecules bind short peptides (8–11 amino acids), while MHC II molecules bind longer peptides (9–22 amino acids). The figure was prepared from PDB files 1QRN (MHC I) and 1FYT (MHC II) using PyMol.