Designing a highly immunogenic multi epitope based subunit vaccine against Bacillus cereus

Muhammad Asif Rasheed; Muhammad Awais; Adil Aldhahrani; Fayez Althobaiti; Alaa Alhazmi; Sobia Sattar; Umara Afzal; Hosam Ali Baeshen; Hesham Ali El Enshasy; Daniel Joe Dailin; Ameena A Al-Surhanee; Faryal Kabir

doi:10.1016/j.sjbs.2021.06.082

Designing a highly immunogenic multi epitope based subunit vaccine against Bacillus cereus

Saudi J Biol Sci. 2021 Sep;28(9):4859-4866. doi: 10.1016/j.sjbs.2021.06.082. Epub 2021 Jul 1.

Authors

Muhammad Asif Rasheed¹, Muhammad Awais², Adil Aldhahrani³, Fayez Althobaiti⁴, Alaa Alhazmi^{5

6}, Sobia Sattar¹, Umara Afzal⁷, Hosam Ali Baeshen⁸, Hesham Ali El Enshasy^{9

10

11}, Daniel Joe Dailin^{9

10}, Ameena A Al-Surhanee¹², Faryal Kabir¹³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biosciences, COMSATS University Islamabad, Sahiwal Campus, 57000 Sahiwal, Pakistan.
² Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Science, University of Sialkot, Pakistan.
³ Clinical Laboratory Sciences Department, Turabah University College, Taif University, Taif 21995, Saudi Arabia.
⁴ Department of Biotechnology, College of Science, Taif University, P.O. Box 11099, Taif 21944, Saudi Arabia.
⁵ Medical Laboratory Technology Department, Jazan University, Jazan, Saudi Arabia.
⁶ SMIRES for Consultation in Specialized Medical Laboratories, Jazan University, Jazan, Saudi Arabia.
⁷ Department of Chemistry, Rawalpindi Women University, Satellite Town Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
⁸ Department of Orthodontics, Faculty of Dentistry, King Abdulaziz University, P. O. Box 80209, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia.
⁹ Institute of Bioproduct Development (IBD), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Skudai, Johor, Malaysia.
¹⁰ School of Chemical and Energy Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Skudai, Johor, Malaysia.
¹¹ City of Scientific Research and Technology Applications (SRTA), New Burg Al Arab, Alexandria, Egypt.
¹² Biology Department, College of Science, Jouf University, Sakaka 2014, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
¹³ University Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, PMAS-Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

Abstract

Objective: Serious non-gastrointestinal-tract infections and food poisoning are caused by Bacillus cereus. Vaccination against B. cereus is very important. The aim of this study was to identify and analyze B and T cell epitopes for chromate transporter protein of the bacteria.

Methods: Multiple sequence alignment with the Clustal Omega method was used to identify conserved regions and Geneious Prime was used to produce a consensus sequence. T and B cell epitopes were predicted by various computational tools from the NetCTL and Immune Epitope Database (IEDB), respectively.

Results: Altogether, 6 HTL cells and 11 CTL epitopes were predicted. This vaccine's molecular docking is done with Patch Dock and LigPlot to verify interactions. The immune server (C-IMMSIM) was used to develop In silico immune response in order to assess the multi-epitope vaccine's immunogenic profile.

Conclusion: We designed universal vaccine against B. cereus responsible for food poisoning. The disease may be avoided with the aid of the proposed epitope-based vaccine.

Keywords: Bacillus cereus; Bioinformatics; Epitope-based vaccine; Food poisoning; Immunity.