RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Genome based Evolutionary study of SARS-CoV-2 towards the Prediction of Epitope Based Chimeric Vaccine JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 2020.04.15.036285 DO 10.1101/2020.04.15.036285 A1 Mst Rubaiat Nazneen Akhand A1 Kazi Faizul Azim A1 Syeda Farjana Hoque A1 Mahmuda Akther Moli A1 Bijit Das Joy A1 Hafsa Akter A1 Ibrahim Khalil Afif A1 Nadim Ahmed A1 Mahmudul Hasan YR 2020 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/04/15/2020.04.15.036285.abstract AB SARS-CoV-2 is known to infect the neurological, respiratory, enteric, and hepatic systems of human and has already become an unprecedented threat to global healthcare system. COVID-19, the most serious public condition caused by SARS-CoV-2 leads the world to an uncertainty alongside thousands of regular death scenes. Unavailability of specific therapeutics or approved vaccine has made the recovery of COVI-19 more troublesome and challenging. The present in silico study aimed to predict a novel chimeric vaccines by simultaneously targeting four major structural proteins via the establishment of ancestral relationship among different strains of coronaviruses. Conserved regions from the homologous protein sets of spike glycoprotein (S), membrane protein (M), envelope protein and nucleocapsid protein (N) were identified through multiple sequence alignment. The phylogeny analyses of whole genome stated that four proteins (S, E, M and N) reflected the close ancestral relation of SARS-CoV-2 to SARS-COV-1 and bat coronavirus. Numerous immunogenic epitopes (both T cell and B cell) were generated from the common fragments which were further ranked on the basis of antigenicity, transmembrane topology, conservancy level, toxicity and allergenicity pattern and population coverage analysis. Top putative epitopes were combined with appropriate adjuvants and linkers to construct a novel multiepitope subunit vaccine against COVID-19. The designed constructs were characterized based on physicochemical properties, allergenicity, antigenicity and solubility which revealed the superiority of construct V3 in terms safety and efficacy. Essential molecular dynamics and Normal Mode analysis confirmed minimal deformability of the refined model at molecular level. In addition, disulfide engineering was investigated to accelerate the stability of the protein. Molecular docking study ensured high binding affinity between construct V3 and HLA cells, as well as with different host receptors. Microbial expression and translational efficacy of the constructs were checked using pET28a(+) vector of E. coli strain K12. The development of preventive measures to combat COVID-19 infections might be aided the present study. However, the in vivo and in vitro validation might be ensured with wet lab trials using model animals for the implementation of the presented data.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.