StriMap integrates physicochemical, sequence-context, and interface-structural features to predict TCR–peptide–HLA recognition, and screening 13 million peptides from 43,241 bacterial proteins yielded candidate molecular mimics that activated T cells expressing an ankylosing spondylitis-associated TCR
The work presents StriMap, a unified framework that predicts TCR–peptide–HLA interactions by integrating physicochemical, sequence-context, and structural features at recognition interfaces, reporting state-of-the-art performance with improved generalizability; as a case study, the authors screened 13 million peptides from 43,241 bacterial proteins and identified candidate molecular mimics that were experimentally validated to activate T cells expressing an ankylosing spondylitis (AS)-associated TCR, with a top validated peptide enriched in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), suggesting potential shared microbial triggers.