Screening Candidate Antigens for Shigella Vaccine by Bioinformatics Methods

Abstract:

The bioinformatics analysis tools of SignalP, PSORT-B, Cell-Ploc, TMHMM, Phobius, LipoP and PRED-TMBB were used to screen putative surface-exposed or exported proteins for vaccine candidate antigens among three Shigella genome sequences of Shigella flexneri 2a strain 301, S. flexneri 2a strain 5b8401 and Shigella sonnei strain Ss046. As results, 96, 158 and 107 ORFs, putatively coding a series of lipoproteins, β-barrel outer membrane proteins and secreted proteins, respectively, were identified from these genome sequences. Among these ORFs, a total of 63 ORFs were conserved in all of these three genomes. In conclusion, bioinformatics methods could be used as an assistant tool in screening candidate antigens for the development of Shigella vaccines. The results might provide an useful basis for further studies of novel Shigella vaccines.