Abstract
The recent outbreak of Zika virus (ZIKV) infection in Brazil has developed to a global health concern due to its likely association with birth defects (primary microcephaly) and neurological complications. Consequently, there is an urgent need to develop a vaccine to prevent or a medicine to treat the infection. In this study, immunoinformatics approach was employed to predict antigenic epitopes of Zika viral proteins to aid in development of a peptide vaccine against ZIKV. Both linear and conformational B-cell epitopes as well as cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes were predicted for ZIKV Envelope (E), NS3 and NS5 proteins. We further investigated the binding interactions of altogether 15 antigenic CTL epitopes with three class I major histocompatibility complex (MHC I) proteins after docking the peptides to the binding groove of the MHC I proteins. The stability of the resulting peptide-MHC I complexes was further studied by molecular dynamics simulations. The simulation results highlight the limits of rigid-body docking methods. Some of the antigenic epitopes predicted and analyzed in this work might present a preliminary set of peptides for future vaccine development against ZIKV.
Original language | Undefined/Unknown |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 1–17 |
Journal | Scientific Reports |
Volume | 6 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2016 |
MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Keywords
- Zika virus
- immunoinformatics
- bioinformatics
- epitope prediction
- peptide vaccine