Statistical significance was determined at p < 0.05 by the two-tailed, non-parametric Mann–Whitney U-test comparing the number of spots in the peptide wells with the number of spots in the control wells. Based on criteria described in the methods, 38 HLA-A2 peptides chosen for this study in 2002 or 2009 had EpiMatrix Z-scores between 1.81 and 4.61 at the time of selection. Notably, five of these peptides, initially identified in 1997 for their estimated binding potential selleckchem (EBP; precursor to EpiMatrix scores), were selected for the current study after reanalysis with the 2002 EpiMatrix algorithm, which revealed EpiMatrix Z-scores ranging from 3.05

to 4.61. Since HIV sequence space has been well mapped for HLA-A2 epitopes, it is not surprising that sixteen of the peptides selected using EpiMatrix had been published when selleck chemicals llc they were selected for inclusion in our prospective in vitro studies. Five of these sixteen sequences were previously published as binders to alleles other than HLA-A2 (see Table 1) but were not reported as epitopes for HLA-A2. Fourteen of the remaining 22 peptides that were novel at selection have since been published in the literature

after we performed the analysis (2002 and 2009); again, this is not surprising and reinforces the utility of the approach for HLA-A2, which can be applied to other HLA alleles. In this study, we were able to identify eight novel, as yet unpublished HLA-A2 epitopes. Overall stability is evident for each of the A2 epitopes selected using a dual conservation-putative binding

score approach (Fig. 1). Even as the number of protein sequences has increased significantly over the period from 1987 to 2009, the prevalence of each epitope within those protein sequences has remained relatively constant. This data demonstrates that the set of selected HLA-A2 epitopes is evolutionarily conserved and has now become relatively stable within the diversity of HIV sequences. For each year from 1987 through 2009, conservation is calculated retrospectively as the proportion of each HIV epitope to the total number of sequences within the epitope’s protein of origin available for that year. Level trends Rutecarpine across the evolutionary landscape indicate stable targets. The most highly conserved HLA-A2 binding peptide found in this analysis was GAG-3003 (97% conserved over the evolutionary landscape). This epitope, located in GAG p2419-27 TLNAWVKVV (TV9), is a well-defined HLA-A2-restricted epitope located in helix 1 of the capsid protein. It overlaps the well-known B*57 IW10 epitope and may be under some functional constraint, although mutations are tolerated in this helix whereas mutations in helices two and eight are not. CTL targeting the HLA-A2 epitope are subdominant but are reported to be high avidity [57]. For the selected envelope peptides, ENV-3001 was present in the greatest proportion of published envelope sequences, represented in 95% of the 258 envelope sequences available in 1987.