Designing a Multi-Epitope Candidate Vaccine against Zika Virus NS5 Protein Through Immunoinformatics Approach for Producing in Plant Systems

Background: The Zika virus is an infectious virus that belongs to the Flaviviridae family. It is transmitted to humans through mosquito vectors and poses a serious threat to human health. Despite available resources, there is currently no effective and secure vaccine against the Zika virus to prevent such infections Objective: Observation of symptoms including fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis (red eyes) along with the possibility of severe complications during pregnancy, including birth defects such as microcephaly, is noted in infected individuals. So, it is the need of the hour to develop a potential vaccine that can immunize the human beings against this virus and protect them. For the purpose of vaccine development against the Zika virus, bioinformatics and immunoinformatics approaches are utilized. Materials and methods: Different epitopes from RdRp Protein of Zika virus were predicted including B-Cell and T- Cell epitopes. The selected epitopes were analyzed further in order to check their antigenicity, immunogenicity, solubility and toxicity in correspondence to their ability to initiate immune response in the individuals. The potential epitopes having the ability to trigger a good immune response and having non- toxic nature were utilized for vaccine development. By combining the different epitopes, a potential multi-epitope vaccine construct was developed. Combining of epitopes was done using EAAAK, AAY and GPGPG linkers. A 50S ribosomal protein was added at N terminal to improve the immunogenicity of the vaccine and 6-His tag protein also added at C terminal. Results: The constructed vaccine was found to have good population coverage all across the world. In molecular docking, strong interactions were found between the constructed vaccine and Toll-like receptor 3 (-346.16), suggesting their potential relevance in the immune response to the vaccine and dynamical stabilities were inspected through molecular dynamic (MD) simulation methods. The developed vaccine construct also exhibited good results of immune response in immune simulation and revealed that the constructed vaccine activates B and T lymphocytes which induce high levels of antibodies and cytokines to combat Zika infection. The constructed vaccine is an effective biomarker with non-toxicity, non-allergic properties, good immunogenicity, and antigenicity. However, experimental assays are required to verify the results of the present study. Conclusion: These findings suggest that design vaccine candidate effectively trigger immune response with no side effects against Zika virus. Keywords:- Zika virus vaccine, Epitope prediction, immunoinformatics, Multiepitope vaccine, Molecular docking.