Use of Integrated Core Proteomics, Immuno-Informatics, and In Silico Approaches to Design a Multiepitope Vaccine against Zoonotic Pathogen Edwardsiella tarda

Abstract

Multidrug-resistant Edwardsiella tarda has been reported as the main causative agent for massive fish mortality. The pathogen is well-known for causing hemorrhagic septicemia in fish and has been linked to gastrointestinal infections in humans. Formalin-inactivated Edwardsiella vaccination has previously been found to be ineffective in aquaculture species. Therefore, based on E. tarda’s integrated core complete sequenced genomes, the study aimed to design a subunit vaccine based on T and B cell epitopes employing immunoinformatics approach. Initially, the top immunodominant and antigenic epitopes were predicted from the core complete sequenced genomes of the E. tarda genome and designed the vaccine by using linkers and adjuvant. In addition, vaccine 3D structure was predicted followed by refinement, and molecular docking was performed for the analysis of interacting residues between vaccines with TLR5, MHC-I, and MHC-II, respectively. The final vaccine constructs demonstrated strong hydrogen bond interactions. Molecular dynamic simulation of vaccine-TLR5 receptor complex showed a stable structural binding and compactness. Furthermore, E. coli used as a model organism for codon optimization proved optimal GC content and CAI value, which were subsequently cloned in vector pET2+ (a). Overall, the findings of the study imply that the designed epitope vaccine might be a good option for prophylaxis for E. tarda.

Core Proteomics and Immunoinformatic Approaches to Design a Multiepitope Reverse Vaccine Candidate against Chagas Disease

“…+97° ± 30° and −87° ± 30° are the default settings. Engineered disulfides have improved protein stability, allowing researchers to understand better protein dynamics and interactions [ 66 , 67 , 68 ].…”

Transforming Aquaculture Through Vaccination: A Review on Recent Developments and Milestones

“…The pursuit of epitope identification and the optimization of vaccine development for important aquatic pathogens like Edwardsiella tarda and Flavobacterium columnare is still ongoing, as one can see by the more recent publications on the topic [147,159,160]. This serves as promising proof that the technology of synthetic peptide-epitope vaccines is a valuable tool for aquaculture vaccine development and is expected to improve further in the coming years with the current onset of -omics approaches.…”

“…It is rather encouraging to witness the implementation of increasingly sophisticated methodologies being used in the pursuit of epitope identification and the development of aquaculture vaccines, as recently, in 2022, Islam et al explored an immunoinformatics and integrated core proteomics approach to identify and develop epitope vaccines against Edwardsiella tarda and Aeromonas veronii [147,148]. In the realm of viral pathogens, attempts have been primarily focused on betanodaviruses [149][150][151][152], iridoviruses [153], and the tilapia lake virus (TiLV) [154,155].…”

Proteomic characterization of Tenacibaculum dicentrarchi under iron limitation reveals an upregulation of proteins related to iron oxidation and reduction metabolism, iron uptake systems and gliding motility

“…Given that this iron mechanism may be inherent to T. dicentrarchi isolates, a strategy for vaccine design involves identifying proteins that could be involved in the pathogen-host interaction, specifically evoking an immune response in the fish. This vaccinology approach has been studied for other bacterial fish pathogens such as Flavobacterium psychrophilum (Dumetz et al, 2008), Aeromonas hydrophila (Wang et al, 2019) and Edwarsiella tarda (Islam et al, 2022), among other.…”