Fig. 5

Profiles of sequential mutated Spike peptide-common HLA binding affinity changes of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants in different population. The strengths and changes in binding affinities of sequential Spike peptides to population-specific common HLA class I (A–C) and II (D–F) alleles in the Taiwanese (A, D), British (B, E), and Russian (C, F) populations are depicted as heatmaps. The mutated Spike peptides of the Omicron EG.5 and XBB.1.16 variants were arranged in sequential order based on their starting positions (first amino acid) of alignments to the reference Spike protein sequence of the original Wuhan strain. The strength of mutated Spike peptide-common HLA binding affinities was determined to be either tight binding (red), moderate binding (orange), or weak/no binding (gray) as displayed in the left heatmaps. The mutated Spike peptide-common HLA binding affinity change was determined as either increased (red), decreased (blue), or unchanged (gray) alteration as shown in the right heatmaps. For those Spike peptides in either Omicron variant without a mutated form, the change in binding affinity was illustrated by empty space (white) in both heatmaps