Evaluating and designing contraceptive vaccine and recombinant fusion protein based on IZUMO, SPRASA and PH-20 epitopes

Contraceptive vaccines can be used as a valuable and alternative method to providePurposeful infertility in humans and animals. There are several targets for producing these vaccines, such as the use of superficial sperm proteins. We designed a novel chimeric protein that contains IZUMO, SPRASA and PH-20 epitopes of superficial sperm protein. In this study, IZUMO, SPRASA and PH-20 isoforms were investigated and then in high conservation regions and by using various tools including IMED, IEDB and EMBOSS as well as based on the structure and sequence techniques and various indices such as specificity, availability, weight and length of epitopes,antigenicity intensity, topological studies and evaluation of related-plots to determine the IZUMO, SPRASA and PH-20 protein s epitope. Protein epitopes selected based on mentioned criteria and Then epitopes joint together by using linkers. The final structure was simulated by GROMACS and Force field of AMBER software. The final protein was introduced as a recombinant protein for the development of contraceptive vaccine. The recombinant protein has a higher ability to induce immune system instead of using mentioned proteins, because we make a protein consist of 3 epitopes with high antigenicity plots. Therefore it can induce immune system 3 times more than normal proteins.

Keywords:

Contraceptive vaccine , Fusion protein , Epitope , Sperm superficial protein , Bioinformatics