Structure and Epitopes of Chi t 1.01

Sorry, there is no abstract. Read the first few lines of the text instead! One possibility to perform immunotherapy of allergic diseases is the design of peptides which bind to the T cell and do not cross-link IgE molecules. The characterization of B and T cell epitopes is therefore of great importance. A general relationship between antigenicity at the B cell level and various parameters like hydrophilicity, flexibility, surface accessibility and structural motifs is assumed. In contrast to this, structural motifs for T cell recognition are thought to be less important since T cells recognize the allergen after fragmentation into peptides. Various algorithms of epitope prediction exist but they are mostly not better than random. However, the N terminus of the insect allergen Chi t 1.01 (hemoglobin component of