Koyunlarda Viral Hastalık Maedi-Visna'ya Karşı Aşı Geliştirilmesinde Antijenik Epitopların Keşfi
Project no. 23604 · Status: Kapanmış · 2022
Summary
<p>Maedi Visna (MVV) is a chronic viral disease of sheep with two distinct forms of clinical and pathological manifestations. The Maedi form of the disease is a progressive interstitial pneumonia, while the Visna form is a meningoencephalitis. Since there is still no effective treatment method and vaccine against this disease today, there are great economic losses in the livestock sector. On the other hand, developing computer-based programs provide great opportunities for the discovery of antigenic proteins and regions called epitopes in protein amino acid sequences, which constitute the most important step in vaccine studies. In this way, the genomes of pathogenic microorganisms can be analyzed in a short time without the need for large expenditures and thus important proteins can be selected for vaccine studies. Moreover, the selected epitopes can be synthesized in a short time under the conditions of today's technology and their immunogenicity can be tested under in vitro conditions with the use of serum samples collected from previously infected hosts. Based on this, the structural proteins of Maedi Visna virus called gag and env will be analyzed for the first time with an approach that includes a large number of bioinformatics and immunoinformatics analyses including antigenicity, discovery of B and T cell epitope regions and docking analyses, and the most ideal B and T cell epitopes with the highest antigenicity value, non-allergenic, soluble, high binding affinity with MHC-I and MHC-II molecules that can be used in vaccine studies will be determined. Then, the selected epitopes will be synthesized and their immunogenicity will be tested by ELISA method under in vitro conditions with the use of serum samples collected from Maedi Visna positive sheep kept in the archive of "Bandırma Sheep Husbandry Research Institute" which are well categorized. As a result, peptides that can be used during the development of a peptide vaccine against Maedi Visna virus, an important viral disease in veterinary medicine, will be identified for the first time.</p>