ABSTRACT
The immune response of organisms to defend against a viral infection consists of two arms: the innate and adaptive immune system. Peptides generated from viral proteins by proteasome cleavage are presented by the different MHC class I and II molecules on the cell surface and are recognized by T cell receptors in an amino acid sequence-specific manner. During HDV replication, exclusively taking place in the nucleus, three distinct RNAs, which include the genome, the positive-stranded antigenome, and viral mRNA, are generated by host RNA polymerases. The HDV P24/P27/RNA complex is covered by the envelope protein of HBV (HBsAg) and chronic carriers of HBV have no anti-HB antibodies. There has been considerable progress over the last years in the development of bioinformatics methods to discover CD8 T cell epitopes and IEMs from viral amino acid sequence data. The benefits of the new bioinformatics methods are exemplified with the HDV infection in humans.
