Preliminary study on designing the binder of sperm-1 synthetic vaccine using sequence-based methods and molecular docking

Abstract

Objective: The main objective of this study is to design a synthetic vaccine from the binder of sperm-1 (BSP1). Materials and Methods: This study was carried out using bioinformatics-related techniques. BSP-1 has been chosen as one of the biomarkers of a ruminant’s male fertility. We hypothesize that the BSP1 synthetic vaccines, which contain T-cell epitopes, can produce antibodies more effectively for the development of a sperm fertility detection kit. A sequence of BSP-1 peptides A0A0K1YXR5 from Bubalus bubalis (Domestic water buffalo) origin has been decided to be used to develop the peptide vaccine. Results: In this study, we succeeded in making synthetic vaccines from BSP-1 with a peptide sequence of LPEDSVPDEERVFPFTYRNRKHF. The three-dimensional theoretical prediction analysis of the peptide binding pattern to its ligand, as well as the molecular docking, has also been revealed. Conclusions: A synthetic vaccine from the BSP-1 has been developed in this study with the amino acid sequence LPEDSVPDEERVFPFTYRNRKHF, which is buffer-soluble, and the three-dimensional theoretical prediction analysis of the peptide binding pattern of BSP-1 to its ligand, as well as molecular docking, has also been revealed.

Immunoblot analysis of antibodies obtained from rabbits immunized with a synthetic Binder of Sperm Protein-1 (BSP-1) epitope

“…It should be noticed here that the main point of this result is that the synthetic epitope vaccine available in our laboratory [9] has successfully triggered the local rabbit immune system to produce antibodies against BSP-1. Another study, such as the one that conducted by Ardon and Suarez [9], although using a residue sequence of the BSP-1 peptide different from us, i.e. "dqdeg vsteptqdg" as the vaccine, produced antibodies against BSP-1 with an immunoblot pattern that similar to ours.…”

“…These results illustrate that the antibody (BSP1-Ab) obtained in this study is specific to buffalo semen. This specificity is likely because the vaccine used was derived from the peptide sequence of BSP-1 Bubalus bubalis [9].…”

“…In this study, the antibodies tested were developed in our laboratory (called BSP1-Ab), derived from local rabbit serum that had previously been multiple vaccinated using peptide synthetic from BSP-1 with the sequence of LPEDSVPDEERVFPFTYRNRKHF [9].…”

“…Since BSP-1 has the capacity to stabilize the sperm membrane and mediate the sperm binding to the oviduct's epithelium [7,8], we recently focused on BSP-1 and tried to develop antibodies against it. For this purpose, we developed immunogenic epitopes of BSP-1 in silico [9]. In this paper, we report the analyzing results of the antibodies by means of immunoblot assay.…”