부산대학교 도서관

Enterococcus faecalis is an opportunistic pathogen known to cause urinary tract and gastrointestinal infection in addition to bacteraemia, endocarditis, meningitis, and wound infections. In this article, we have designed a multi-epitope vaccine construct against E. faecalis through an advanced immune-informatics approach. Four linear B-cell epitopes, eight cytotoxic T-lymphocyte epitopes, and seven helper T-lymphocyte epitopes have been selected from Ace, EbpA, PrgK, and PrgB antigenic surface proteins, and then linked together using the appropriate linkers and adjuvants. The anticipated multi-epitope vaccine construct was assessed to be highly antigenic, non-toxic and non-allergenic by the application of VaxiJen v2.0, Toxinpred and AllerTOP v2.0. Further, flexibility, stability, and hydropathicity have been estimated by assessing physicochemical parameters with the application of Expasy ProtParam server. The final vaccine construct has been docked with TLR4 and molecular dynamics simulation is carried out to assess the stability. The in-silico analysis also revealed that the proposed vaccine has a low probability of causing adverse effects or inducing immune tolerance. Additionally, CRISPR based integration into the plant cell could serve as food-based vaccine delivery system for immunization. Together, our findings support the potential of the vaccine construct to elicit a robust and specific immune response, making it a viable vaccine candidate.Graphical abstract: