Exploring the Zika Genome to Design a Potential Multiepitope Vaccine Using an Immunoinformatics Approach
- PDF / 3,117,384 Bytes
- 10 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 68 Downloads / 165 Views
Exploring the Zika Genome to Design a Potential Multiepitope Vaccine Using an Immunoinformatics Approach Ayushi Mittal1 · Santanu Sasidharan1 · Shweta Raj1 · S. N. Balaji1 · Prakash Saudagar1 Accepted: 7 January 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Zika is one of the most dreaded viruses which has left mankind crippled for over years. Current no vaccines for Zika are available in the market and only a few are in the clinical trials. The conventional vaccine approach uses live-attenuated or inactivated vaccines for administration which are unsafe and produces relapse of the disease. Considering the need for a safer vaccine, an immunoinformatics approach to design and develop a multi-epitope vaccine against Zika was conducted. Capsid, membrane and envelope proteins were retrieved from the database and were utilized to predict MHC class-I and class-II epitopes. The vaccine was constructed with a β-defensin at the N-terminal followed by CTL and the HTL joined together by respective linkers. Linear B-cell epitopes were predicted for the constructed vaccine followed by an assessment of physiological parameters. The vaccine was found to elicit an antigen response and was allergen safe. The vaccine construct was then modeled and the docked against the TLR4 receptor for understanding the capability of the vaccine to elicit an immune response. The docked complex was further simulated for 20 ns and an average of 13 hydrogen bonds was calculated from the trajectory. Finally, the vaccine construct was in-silico cloned into the pET28a(+) vector for affinity purification using His-tag. In a nutshell, the vaccine construct has a high potential to be developed as a vaccine against Zika. Further studies including experimental investigations and immunological studies will be required to validate the construct in a real-time scenario. Keywords Zika · Multi-epitope vaccine · MD simulation · In-silico cloning
Introduction Zika virus is a mosquito-borne flavivirus which was identified in Uganda in 1947 in sentinel rhesus monkey (Gubler et al. 2017). The virus was later identified in humans in 1952 in Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania. The name ‘Zika’ originated from the Zika forest in Uganda. The primary consequences of the disease being Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS), microcephaly and other congenital brain abnormalities (Krauer et al. 2017). This virus has been accounted to be similar to Dengue and West-Nile virus. Only sporadic Zika cases were reported when Zika was first discovered but as it evolved various pathways of transmission Ayushi Mittal and Santanu Sasidharan have contributed equally to this work. * Prakash Saudagar [email protected] 1
Department of Biotechnology, National Institute of Technology, Warangal, Telangana 506004, India
were found, of which vector based is one of the major modes. Aedes mosquito is the primary vector for transmission of the Zika virus. Aedes mosquito bite during the day leads to the transmission of the virus and this vector had caused major epidemics and outbreaks (Malone et al.
Data Loading...
