We are looking at a vesicular stomatitus virus peptide sitting in the groove (magenta) of a class I MHC molecule (mouse H-2Kb). We are looking at the face to which the T cell antigen receptor would bind. Most of the octapeptide's side chains interact with the lips and floor (yellow) of the groove, but three stick up (glutamine, valine, and arginine) forming the T cell determinant for this peptide. Contrast this with the sendai peptide.

The peptide uses RasMol's Corey/Pauling/Koltun color scheme: carbon is gray, oxygen is red, and nitrogen is blue. Hydrogens would be white but are not resoved by X-ray crystallography.

This image was constructed from images in a RasMol "movie" script. The atomic coordinate file employed is 1VAA.PDB.

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