• Immunoinformatic design and evaluation of a multi-epitope DNA vaccine for cross-immunization against different strains of Salmonella
  • amirhossein ghiasi,1 Tahereh Sadeghian-Rizi,2,* Mokhtar Nosrati,3
    1. Department of Genetics, Faculty of Biological Sciences and Technology, Shahid Ashrafi Esfahani University, Isfahan, Iran
    2. Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Biological Sciences and Technology, Shahid Ashrafi Esfahani University, Isfahan, Iran
    3. Zistfile bioinformatics center


  • Introduction: Salmonella, which can be transmitted to humans and even animals through food or water contaminated with it, causes gastroenteritis, typhoid fever and bacteremia. Control of Salmonella infection is difficult due to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant species and the effect of Its adverse effects on the immune response. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a vaccine against different strains of Salmonella.
  • Methods: In this study, the target antigens were identified using the VFDB server, and then their protein sequences were analyzed with the IEDB and TepiTool servers to identify B T cell epitopes. After screening, the best epitopes were selected to design the core structure of the vaccine. The 3D structure of the vaccine was generated with the Swiss Model server and improved with The ReFOLD. Also, the three-dimensional structure of spatial B epitopes was obtained with Ellipro, and the physicochemical properties were analyzed with ProtParam and PepCalc. Next, the efficacy of the vaccine was evaluated with the HDock server and its activity in the immune system was interpreted with C-IMMSIM. Finally, the vaccine sequence was converted to DNA and then to mRNA, and the two-dimensional structure of mRNA was created with UTRdb.
  • Results: Designed vaccine were evaluated in terms of antigenicity, solubility, allergenicity, binding energy, tertiary structure, improved structure, spatial epitope B, physicochemical properties including stability index, aliphatic index, half-life and isoelectronic point. According to the results, final vaccine structure was confirmed.
  • Conclusion: In this study, for the first time, a multi-epitope vaccine DNA based on fimH, Rck, CdtB antigens was designed, which provided favorable characteristics and can potentially stimulated humoral and cellular immune system against different strains of Salmonella, although experimental studies are necessary.
  • Keywords: Salmonella, multi-epitope DNA vaccine, fimH, Rck, cdtB, bioinformatics tools