Figure 1.

Post-translationally spliced peptides and in silico pipeline for the identification of T1D-associated zwitter epitope candidates. (A) Post-translationally spliced peptides can be formed by: i cis-peptide splicing, when the two splice-reactants, i.e. the non-contiguous peptide fragments ligated by a protease, derive from the same polypeptide molecule; the ligation can occur in normal order, i.e. following the orientation from N- to C-terminus of the parental protein (direct cis-spliced peptides), or in the reverse order (reverse cis-spliced peptides); ii. trans-peptide splicing, when the two splice-reactants originate from two distinct protein molecules or two distinct proteins (6). (B) In silico pipeline to identify a pool of zwitter non-spliced or cis-spliced epitope candidates associated with T1D.