B-vac a robust software package for bacterial vaccine design

Reverse Vaccinology (RV) has revolutionized vaccine discovery, utilizing bioinformatics to surpass traditional methods in identifying genes and proteins. By analyzing pathogen genomic data, RV pinpoints proteins with key traits such as immunogenicity, surface localization, and conservation across strains. Despite its advantages, current RV tools face challenges like prediction accuracy, computational demands, and accessibility. To address these challenges, we introduce B-vac, an executable pipeline designed to streamline bacterial vaccine design. B-vac features a user-friendly interface and robust algorithms for high-throughput proteomics data analysis, covering modules like Localization, Non-host Homolog, Virulence Factor, and Epitope Mapping. It operates offline, enhancing accessibility for researchers with limited computational resources. B-vac is equipped with epitope libraries, bacterial proteomes and virulence factor database which helps the program process the protein sequences locally and feeds data back to users with the ability to set variables and toggles for cut-off and filter values. The B-vac pipeline uses a string-based matching approach to match proteomes supplied by users with the pipeline's curated database. This approach aligns and compares pathogen protein sequences by string similarity and enables the researchers to easily identify motifs important for immunogenic function. Evaluation of the pipeline by employing the Helicobacter pylori proteome revealed B-vac's effectiveness in identifying vaccine candidates. B-vac offers a user-friendly, standalone solution for bacterial vaccine development, eliminating the need for external libraries and enabling offline usability, addressing key gaps in convenience and accessibility compared to existing RV tools. B-vac can be downloaded from: https://mgbio.tech/tools/ .