ArticlePloS one2012
Pentamers not found in the universal proteome can enhance antigen specific immune responses and adjuvant vaccines.
Article in PloS one, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 45 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Cellular Activity of CQWW Nullomer-Derived Peptides.ACS omega · 2025Article
- Identification of the shortest species-specific oligonucleotide sequences.Genome research · 2025Article
- Unraveling diversity by isolating peptide sequences specific to distinct taxonomic groups.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- The topography of nullomer-emerging mutations and their relevance to human disease.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2025Article
- A survey of k-mer methods and applications in bioinformatics.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2024Review
- kmerDB: A database encompassing the set of genomic and proteomic sequence information for each species.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2024Article
- Article
- Two DNA vaccines protect against severe disease and pathology due to SARS-CoV-2 in Syrian hamsters.NPJ vaccines · 2022Article
- Immunomodulatory Lectin-like Peptides for Fish Erythrocytes-Targeting as Potential Antiviral Drug Delivery Platforms.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Article
- Absent from DNA and protein: genomic characterization of nullomers and nullpeptides across functional categories and evolution.Genome biology · 2021Article
- Recombinant Antigens Based on Non-Glycosylated Regions from RBD SARS-CoV-2 as Potential Vaccine Candidates against COVID-19.Vaccines · 2021Article
- An Epitope Platform for Safe and Effective HTLV-1-Immunization: Potential Applications for mRNA and Peptide-Based Vaccines.Viruses · 2021Article
- Significant non-existence of sequences in genomes and proteomes.Nucleic acids research · 2021Article
- Epitopes for a 2019-nCoV vaccine.Cellular & molecular immunology · 2020Article
- Enhancing the Immune Response of a Nicotine Vaccine with Synthetic Small "Non-Natural" Peptides.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Global pentapeptide statistics are far away from expected distributions.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Computer-aided prediction of antigen presenting cell modulators for designing peptide-based vaccine adjuvants.Journal of translational medicine · 2018Article
- Peptide presentation by HLA-DQ molecules is associated with the development of immune tolerance.PeerJ · 2018Article
- Increased humoral immunity by DNA vaccination using an α-tocopherol-based adjuvant.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Certain short peptides do not occur in humans and are rare or non-existent in the universal proteome. Antigens that contain rare amino acid sequences are in general highly immunogenic and may activate different arms of the immune system. We first generated a list of rare, semi-common, and common 5-mer peptides using bioinformatics tools to analyze the UniProtKB database. Experimental observations indicated that rare and semi-common 5-mers generated stronger cellular responses in comparison with common-occurring sequences. We hypothesized that the biological process responsible for this enhanced immunogenicity could be used to positively modulate immune responses with potential application for vaccine development. Initially, twelve rare 5-mers, 9-mers, and 13-mers were incorporated in frame at the end of an H5N1 hemagglutinin (HA) antigen and expressed from a DNA vaccine. The presence of some 5-mer peptides induced improved immune responses. Adding one 5-mer peptide exogenously also offered improved clinical outcome and/or survival against a lethal H5N1 or H1N1 influenza virus challenge in BALB/c mice and ferrets, respectively. Interestingly, enhanced anti-HBsAg antibody production by up to 25-fold in combination with a commercial Hepatitis B vaccine (Engerix-B, GSK) was also observed in BALB/c mice. Mechanistically, NK cell activation and dependency was observed with enhancing peptides ex vivo and in NK-depleted mice. Overall, the data suggest that rare or non-existent oligopeptides can be developed as immunomodulators and supports the further evaluation of some 5-mer peptides as potential vaccine adjuvants.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.