Identification of Immunogenic Peptide in Nucleoprotein (NP) of H1N1 and H3N2

Abstract

Influenza is one of the most infectious diseases confronting the world today; however no effective prevention against influenza has been developed because of the antigenic variation in influenza virus. Epitope based vaccines imparts an efficient strategy for protection against antigenic variations of influenza viruses. Conserved regions of Nucleoprotein (NP) of H1N1 and H3N2 strains of influenza virus A having a conservancy of more than 80% were detected by computational tool based on informational entropy. Epitopes for HLA alleles of MHC class I and class II from the conserved regions were predicted using immunoinformatics tools. Immunogenic peptide were identified and selected by predicted overlapping epitopes. These immunogenic peptides were looked for common immunogenic peptide for both MHC class I and class II. Four immunogenic peptide of H1N1 NP: (i) EIRASVG RMIGGIGRFYIQMCTELKL ( 26 amino acid), (ii) TYQRTRALVRTGMDPRMCSLMQGSTLPRRSGAAGAA (36 amino acid), (iii) AYERMCNILKGKFQTA (16 amino acid), (iv) FLARSALILRGSVAHKSCLPAC VY (24 amino acid) and immunogenic peptide regions of H3N2 NP: (i) KMIDGIGRFYIQMC TELKL (19 amino acid), (ii) TYQRTRALVRTGMDPRMCSLMQGSTLPRRSGAAGAAVKGI GTMVMELI (48 amino acid), (iii) NAEIEDLIFLARSALILRGSVAHKS (25 amino acid), (iv) NPAHKSQLVWMACHSAAFEDLRLLSFIRGTKVSPRGKLSTRGVQIASNENMDNMGSSTLELRSGYWAIRTRSG (72 amino acid), (v) IIRMMEGAKPEEVSFRGRGVFELSDEKATPNI VPSF(36 amino acid) were found to be interesting as long stretch of immunogenic peptides were found ranging in length from 16 to 72 amino acid residues.