Structural Analysis of Avian Encephalomyelitis Virus Polyprotein for Development of Multi Epitopes Vaccine Using Immunoinformatics Approach

Abstract

Avian Encephalomyelitis (AE) is the disease caused by avian encephalomyelitis virus (AEV). The disease mainly affects young birds nervous system worldwide causing high morbidity and variable mortality rate in chicks and noticed egg dropping and hatchability in mature hens. Vaccination is the only way to control AEV infection since there is no treatment yet to the avian encephalomyelitis. This study aimed to use immunoinformatics approaches to predict multi epitopes vaccine from the AEV polyprotein that could elicit both B and T cells. The vaccine construct comprises 482 amino acids obtained from epitopes predicted against B and T cells by IEDB server, adjuvant, linkers and 6-His-tag. The chimeric vaccine was potentially antigenic and nonallergic and demonstrated thermostability and hydrophilicity in protparam server. The solubility of the vaccine was measured in comparison to E. coli proteins. The stability was also assessed by disulfide bonds engineering to reduce the high mobility regions in the designed vaccine. Furthermore molecular dynamics simulation further strengthen stability of the predicted vaccine. Tertiary structure of the vaccine construct after prediction, refinement was used for molecular docking with chicken alleles BF2*2101 and BF2*0401 and the docking process demonstrated favourable binding energy score of -337.47 kcal/mol and -326.87 kcal/mol, respectively. Molecular cloning demonstrated the potential clonability of the chimeric vaccine in pET28a(+) vector. This could guarantee the efficient translation and expression of the vaccine within suitable expression vector.