Prediction of promiscuous T-cell epitopes in the Zika virus polyprotein: An in silico approach

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• 作者：Hamza Dar¹ ; Tahreem Zaheer¹ ; Muhammad Talha Rehman¹ ; Amjad Ali¹ ; Aneela Javed¹ ; ^{javedaneela@gmail.com" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author} ; Gohar Ayub Khan¹ ; Mustafeez Mujtaba Babar² ; Yasir Waheed³ ; ^{yasir_waheed_199@hotmail.com" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author}
• 关键词：Zika virus ; B-cell epitopes ; T-cell epitopes ; Vaccine ; Antigenicity
• 刊名：Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Medicine
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：September 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：9
• 期：9
• 页码：844-850
• 全文大小：317 K

文摘

To predict immunogenic promiscuous T cell epitopes from the polyprotein of the Zika virus using a range of bioinformatics tools. To date, no epitope data are available for the Zika virus in the IEDB database.

Methods

We retrieved nearly 54 full length polyprotein sequences of the Zika virus from the NCBI database belonging to different outbreaks. A consensus sequence was then used to predict the promiscuous T cell epitopes that bind MHC 1 and MHC II alleles using PorPred1 and ProPred immunoinformatic algorithms respectively. The antigenicity predicted score was also calculated for each predicted epitope using the VaxiJen 2.0 tool.

Results

By using ProPred1, 23 antigenic epitopes for HLA class I and 48 antigenic epitopes for HLA class II were predicted from the consensus polyprotein sequence of Zika virus. The greatest number of MHC class I binding epitopes were projected within the NS5 (21%), followed by Envelope (17%). For MHC class II, greatest number of predicted epitopes were in NS5 (19%) followed by the Envelope, NS1 and NS2 (17% each). A variety of epitopes with good binding affinity, promiscuity and antigenicity were predicted for both the HLA classes.

Conclusion

The predicted conserved promiscuous T-cell epitopes examined in this study were reported for the first time and will contribute to the imminent design of Zika virus vaccine candidates, which will be able to induce a broad range of immune responses in a heterogeneous HLA population. However, our results can be verified and employed in future efficacious vaccine formulations only after successful experimental studies.