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. 2019 Apr 16;11(4):346. doi: 10.3390/v11040346

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© 2019 by the authors.

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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Biogenesis of HA antigenic sites. The HA head antigenic site Sb and HA stem protective epitopes are formed on HA monomers during biogenesis, while for other sites on the HA head, full maturation requires HA trimerization. Contrary to HA stem epitopes, which are destroyed by conformational changes triggered by low pH, HA head antigenic sites are remarkably resistant and remain intact even after proteolytic liberation of the monomeric head domain. The pdb entries 1htm, 1ibn, and 2vir (A/Aichi/2/1968 H3N2) were used to visualize various conformational stages during the fusion process. The HA1 is colored bright blue, HA2 orange, and fusion peptide red. Approximate localization of the canonical antigenic sites and the HA stem epitopes are highlighted by translucent purple with dashed edges. UCSF Chimera 1.13 software was used to visualize the molecules.