In-Silico Prediction of Peptide Based Vaccine Against Zika Virus

Abstract

Zika fever is a disease caused by Zika virus which is a mosquito-borne flavivirus and infection is through the bite of mosquito from the Aedes genus. Other mode of transmission of Zika fever is blood transfusion, which is thoroughly investigated. Prominent symptoms of Zika virus fever are mild fever, skin rash, conjunctivitis, muscle and joint pain, malaise or headache. These symptoms normally last for 2–7 days. There is currently no effective and easily affordable vaccine available against Zika virus. Keeping the current status in mind we have devised our objectives to design a peptide-based vaccine against Zika Virus using in-silico approach. The NS3 and NS5 proteins of Zika virus are well known of having important role in replication of the virus that is why we have targeted these proteins for epitope prediction. Prediction and screening of epitopes was performed using IEDB tool. We have also checked the efficacy of these screened epitopes with the help of IC50 value and docking score. “VEMGEAAAI” was found to be the high affinity binding epitope for MHC Class I and MHC Class II molecule. These findings conclude that the predicted epitope could well be used as a potential vaccine candidate for formulations of vaccines against Zika virus.