Computational design of a new chimeric protein for sero-diagnosis of Mycoplasma hominis

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Development of sensitive and specific immunoassays for indirect detection of Mycoplasma hominis, an opportunistic bacterium in human genital tracts, will ideally use conserved, specific and immunoreactive antigen(s). Because of a high rate of sequence polymorphism, it is necessary to recognize and select conserved epitopes from bacterial surface proteins. this study was conducted to predict and evaluate appropriate epitopes of two membrane proteins, p120 and p80, by bioinformatics tools. MethodS: the linear epitopes of p120 and p80 were predicted by the Kolaskar and tongaonkar antigenicity method. After excluding non-specific epitopes, the remaining peptides were further analyzed by the BepiPred Linear Epitope Prediction method. In addition, the peptides were evaluated for other parameters including conservation, flexibility, hydrophilicity and immune system accessibility. RESULTS: From 26 primary predicted epitopes, 15 were recognized as specific peptides and further evaluation led to selection of 8 for the construction of a chimeric protein. conclUSionS: there are several bioinformatics tools for prediction of B-cell epitopes using different algorithms. Combining different approaches and tools can improve the reliability of the final results. The chimeric protein designed based on consensus predicted epitopes holds promise for the diagnosis of M. hominis infection. © 2018 edizioni Minerva Medica.