Prediction and conservancy analysis of promiscuous T-cell binding epitopes of Ebola virus L protein: An in silico approach

ObjectiveTo predict T-cell antigenic epitopes from the L protein of the Zaire ebolavirus strain, which will help in the development of an effective epitope based vaccine.MethodsThe L protein was selected due to complete absence of any epitope data for this particular protein up to date. We retrieved 101 full-length L protein sequences of Zaire ebolavirus species belonging to the 2014 outbreak from the NCBI database. A consensus sequence was then drawn and was used to predict the T cell epitopes that binded the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) Class I and Class II alleles using the ProPred and ProPred-I immunoinformatics algorithms. The predicted epitopes were also analyzed for conservation in the Immune Epitope Database in comparison with all other Ebolavirus species.ResultsA total of 34 epitopes were predicted for the HLA Class I molecules and 30 epitopes for the HLA Class II molecules. Nearly all the predicted epitopes were conserved at 70% of sequence identity across all the species of Ebolavirus under consideration.ConclusionsThe study revealed that the predicted antigenic epitopes can potentially be used in a future efficacious vaccine development and are anticipated to provoke a strong T cell mediated immune response against the lethal strains of the Ebolavirus.