Figure 2. Example of rule-based approach applied to highest affinity peptide on each test protein.

Proteins are listed in ascending order based on the lowest IC₅₀ (nM) binding affinity score. A threshold value e.g. 1.5 is applied to the score to segregate the list into two classifications. Below the threshold is ‘YES’ for vaccine candidacy and above is ‘NO’. The rule-based classification is compared with the expected classification to determine performance accuracy. Threshold value is derived from a trial-and-error approach with the intention to classify the greatest number of true positives and negatives.