In silico prediction of B cell epitopes of the hemolysis-associated protein 1 for vaccine design against leptospirosis

Abstract

Leptospirosis is known as a zoonotic disease of global importance originated from infection with the spirochete bacterium Leptospira. Although several leptospirosis vaccines have been tested, the vaccination is relatively unsuccessful in clinical application despite decades of research. Therefore, this study was conducted to predict B cell epitopes of the hemolysis-associated protein 1 (Hap1) for vaccine design against leptospirosis. For prediction of linear epitopes, the sequence of extracellular region of Hap1 was submitted to ABCpred, BCPREDs, Bcepred, Bepipred and Ellipro servers. DiscoTope 2.0 and B-pred servers were used for prediction of conformational epitopes from the entire PDB structure of Hap1 that obtained from the homology modeling method. Further analysis for solvent accessible areas and relative solvent accessibility of all the residues on the PDB structures using Naccess program and NetSurfP server defined that predicted conformational B cell epitopes had higher solvent accessible and their residues were exposed on the surface therefore, immunoinformatics analysis showed that hemolysis-associated protein 1 can properly stimulate the B cells immune responses.