In silico identification of potential antigenic targets of Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis

Abstract

Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis is a gram-positive bacterium that causes caseous lymphadenitis. Caseous lymphadenitis mainly affects small ruminants such as goats and sheep. Controlling the disease is very difficult, since the disease is already established in the herd. Objective: The protease of Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis was subjected to in silico evaluation of subcellular localization and protein topology. The in silico prediction of linear B cell epitopes was performed and the conservation analysis of these epitopes was performed on other C. pseudotuberculosis proteomes deposited in the UNIPROT database. Results: 111 proteins were selected from the subcellular evaluation and protein topology, with the subsequent submission of these proteins to a prediction of linear B cell epitopes and their conservation analysis in other proteases of C. pseudotuberculosis, resulting in 9 proteins with one or more regions of epitopes conserved in the same protein. Conclusion: Conserved regions favor a greater recognition of antigens when evaluated. In addition, a list of epitopes that can be synthesized and tested in vitro is provided in this paper.