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ISSN 2063-5346
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IDENTIFICATION OF NOVEL VACCINE TARGETS FROM THE PROTEOME OF KLEBSIELLA PNEUMONIAE TO FIGHT AGAINST THE DEADLY INFECTION PNEUMONIA USING REVERSE VACCINOLOGY APPROACH

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Moka Jaswanth Kumar, Abiramavalli Moorthy
» doi: 10.31838/ecb/2023.12.sa1.363

Abstract

Aim: This study intends to delve into the uncharacterized protein pool of Klebsiella pneumoniae to identify novel vaccine targets using computational methods. Materials and Methods: A total of 50 hypothetical proteins of this organism were selected and retrieved from the NCBI database. Physicochemical properties of the selected 50 proteins were predicted using the PROTPARAM tool, followed by categorizing them based on their predicted functional class using the VICMpred tool. Virulence of these proteins were analyzed using the virulentpred tool. Localization of these proteins were studied using PSORT. The antigenicity of the selected virulent proteins were predicted using VaxiJen v2.0 followed by detection of B-Cell epitopes found in the antigenic proteins using ABCpred. The scores of both the tools were compared and concluded. Results: Out of 50, 28 proteins were found to be virulent and among the 28 virulent proteins, 14 were localized in the cytoplasm, 11 were found to be present in the inner membrane and 2 were from periplasm while only one was found to be from the outer membrane. Among the 11 inner membrane virulent proteins, 4 were found to be an antigen while the one extracellular membrane protein also had antigenic properties. Thus these 5 antigenic proteins were further subjected to epitope prediction which revealed that they possessed B-cell and T-cell epitopes. Conclusion: Based on their virulence scores, antigenicity properties, and presence of epitopes, we conclude that these 5 proteins can be considered as potential drug and vaccine targets with further validation through in-vitro and in-vivo immunology experiments.

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