Abstract

Objective: To 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. Methods: The 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. Results: A 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. Conclusions: The 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.

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