miPepBase: A Database of Experimentally Verified Peptides Involved in Molecular Mimicry

Garg, Anjali; Kumari, Bandana; Kumar, Ravindra; Kumar, Manish

During the last few years, much active research and experimental verification has shed light on various aspects of molecular mimicry and it's role in autoimmune diseases. With the passage of time, number of autoimmune diseases caused due to molecular mimicry is increasing. Since, a unified repository of the available information related to molecular mimicry based autoimmune diseases is not available, hence we have built a database (miPepBase) which not only contains the information regarding proteins and peptides associated with the process, but several other important details also. In-depth analysis of this information might lead to the elucidation of mechanisms of autoimmune diseases controlled by mimicry peptides. Each entry in the miPepBase database is linked to many other molecular biology data repositories. Further, the database also includes inbuilt tools, which can help to fetch other relevant information related to the mimicry proteins and peptides. As more data will accumulate by the use of high throughput molecular, genomic and metagenomic methods, we anticipate that the release of miPepBase will facilitate comprehensive analyses of different factors involved in autoimmune diseases caused by the mimicry peptides. We also hope that miPepBase would be helpful for the scientific community in understanding the host-pathogen interactions, as well as how the pathogens evade host immune systems.