title: Conserved regions of Plasmodium vivax potential vaccine candidate antigens in Sri Lanka: conscious in silico analysis of prospective conformational epitope regions.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To do mapping and modeling of conformational B cell epitope regions of highly conserved and protective regions of three merozoitecandidate vaccine proteins of Plasmodium vivax (P. vivax), ie. merozoite purface protein-1 (PvMSP-1), apical membrane antigen -1 domain ∏ (PvAMA1-D∏) and region ∏ of the Duffy binding protein (PvDBP∏), and to analyze the immunogenic properties of these predicted epitopes.
  
  
  METHODS
  3-D structures of amino acid haplotypes from Sri Lanka (available in GeneBank) of PvMSP-119 (n=27), PvAMA1-D∏ (n=21) and PvDBP∏ (n=33) were modeled. SEPPA, selected as the best online server was used for conformational epitope predictions, while prediction and modeling of protein structure and properties related to immunogenicity was carried out with Geno3D server, SCRATCH Protein Server, NetSurfP Server and standalonesoftware, Genious 5.4.4.
  
  
  RESULTS
  SEPPA revealed that regions of predicted conformational epitopes formed 4 clusters in PvMSP-I19, and 3 clusters each in PvAMA1-D∏ and PvDBP∏, all of which displayed a high degree of hydrophilicity, contained solvent exposed residues, displayed high probability of antigenicity and showed positive antigenic propensity values, that indicated high degree of immunogenicity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Findings of this study revealed and confirmed that different parts of the sequences of each of the conserved regions of the three selected potential vaccine candidate antigens of P. vivax are important with regard to conformational epitope prediction that warrants further laboratory experimental investigations in in vivo animal models.
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Colombo, CumarathungaMunidasaMawatha, Colombo 03, Sri Lanka.
authors.forename: Shanika
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Amarasinghe
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Colombo, CumarathungaMunidasaMawatha, Colombo 03, Sri Lanka.
authors.forename: Hashendra
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kathriarachchi
authors.affiliation: Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, University of Colombo, CumarathungaMunidasaMawatha, Colombo 03, Sri Lanka. Electronic address: dappvr@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Preethi
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Udagama
keywords: Conformational epitopes; Conserved regions; Immunogenicity; Plasmodium vivax; PvAMA1-D∏; PvDBP∏; PvMSP-1(19)