A systematic review: B-cell conformational epitope prediction from epitope characteristics view

B-cell conformational epitope identification is the crucial issue in vaccinology. Limitation on experimental methods in the biological side, dataset and availability of computational resources opens a chance on developing prediction method which can accelerate epitope identification. A number of methods have been developed but their performance is still medium. Epitope prediction is a knowledge-based method. Presenting the statistical or computational based epitope characteristics together with epitope prediction method will facilitate the newcomer on identifying importance feature, improve the existing feature and propose the new feature. To reach the goal of the review, the research papers are collected from both epitope analysis research and epitope prediction methods research. The prediction methods are evaluated on what characteristics of epitope have been implemented on feature representation and are shown in a mapping table.