An immunoinformatics approach towards epitope based vaccine design through computational tools from Bungarus caeruleus’s neurotoxin

摘要

Bungarus caeruleus or common Indian krait is a member of the venomous big four snake species. Its venom contains a neurotoxic protein alpha-delta-bungarotoxin-4 and is found to be responsible for human death 4-8 hours after the snake bite. Antigenecity of this protein was determined by Hopp & Woods and Kolaskar & Tangaonkar method. We predicted MHC class I and MHC class II binding peptides of antigenic protein from alpha-delta-bungarotoxin-4 which are important determinant for protection of host from snake bite. Fragments selected through this study revealed higher efficiency binders. As a result, higher percentages of their atoms are directly involved in binding in comparison with larger molecules. These potential fragments, therefore can be a novel tool in the arena of cross protection to develop host specific antibodies in different objectives. We operated AllerHunter for predicting allergenicity based on the structural and physiochemical properties of whole alpha-delta-bungarotoin-4 and it was found to be non-allergen. The potential epitopes of alpha-delta-bungarotoxin-4 were found to be located at sequences “GENLCYTKM” and “FCSSRGKVI” and these were found to be sufficient for eliciting the desired immune response. In this study a hypothetical immunization is developed which demands more validation and study. It can be emphasized that such predictive in silico study requires an in vivo experiments comprehensibly which must be assured to validate such approaches. So our goal was to identify a conformationally biased epitope sequence which aims to provide a new paradigm to design epitope based peptide vaccines in order to alleviate immunological infections from Krait neurotoxin.