The MHC genomic region in most species is extremely polymorphic. The distinct specificity of the majority of the MHC molecules remains uncharacterized. The MHCcluster is a tool to functionally cluster MHC class I molecules (MHCI) based on their predicted binding specificity. The tool provides highly intuitive heat-map and graphical tree-based visualizations of the functional relationship between MHC class I and class II variants.
For MHC class I, peptide binding predictions are made using
NetMHCpan-2.8
PMID 19002680.
For MHC class II, peptide binding predictions are made using
NetMHCIIpan-3.2
PMID 21073747.
Note, the predictions used by MHCCluster are generated using NetMHCpan-2.8 (class I) and NetMHGCIIpan-3.2 (class II). These tools are outdated, and the accuracy of the prediction motifs should be taken with caution, in perticular for HLA-C and HLA-II