Epitope Prediction and Structural Analysis of Pra Antigen of Coccidioides

Objective: Coccidioidomycosis is a life threatening human respiratory disease caused by Original Article EPITOPE PREDICTION AND STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PRA ANTIGEN OF COCCIDIOIDES PRASHANT SAXENA, JEMMY CHRISTY. H* Department of Bioinformatics, Sathyabama University,Chennai 119, India. Email: [email protected] Coccidioides immitis and C. posadasii. As the incidence of symptomatic Coccidioidomycosis increases worldwide, vaccine development strategy against Coccidioides is needed for both immunocompetent and immunocompromized individuals. An insight about PRA antigens in the pathogenesis of Coccidioidomycosis has the potential to develop a therapeutic intervention. Methods: In this study of ANN, SMM and QM based servers were used to predict promiscuous epitopes. Epitope structures were modeled using De novo based PEPFOLD server and minimized using Swiss model server. Further the modeled epitopes were tested for their binding affinity towards HLA alleles by means of peptide protein docking studies involving autodock. Results: A total of six antigenic epitopes ARISVSNIV, GRPTASTPA, ALNLFVEAL, LVAAGLASA, FSHALJALV, AEPTHEPTE of PRA showed hydrogen bonding with HLA alleles HLA-A*02:03, HLA B*27:05, HLA-A*02:01 with considerable bond distance. Thus, this systematic study on epitopes of