key: cord-1042802-m4ooe2rj
authors: Rawal, Kamal; Sinha, Robin; Abbasi, Bilal Ahmed; Chaudhary, Amit; Nath, Swarsat Kaushik; Kumari, Priya; Preeti, P.; Saraf, Devansh; Singh, Shachee; Mishra, Kartik; Gupta, Pranjay; Mishra, Astha; Sharma, Trapti; Gupta, Srijanee; Singh, Prashant; Sood, Shriya; Subramani, Preeti; Dubey, Aman Kumar; Strych, Ulrich; Hotez, Peter J.; Bottazzi, Maria Elena
title: Identification of vaccine targets in pathogens and design of a vaccine using computational approaches
date: 2021-09-02
journal: Sci Rep
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-96863-x
sha: 2d42efa0fb925bc71425c6b18d2b815c6a18fbe5
doc_id: 1042802
cord_uid: m4ooe2rj

Antigen identification is an important step in the vaccine development process. Computational approaches including deep learning systems can play an important role in the identification of vaccine targets using genomic and proteomic information. Here, we present a new computational system to discover and analyse novel vaccine targets leading to the design of a multi-epitope subunit vaccine candidate. The system incorporates reverse vaccinology and immuno-informatics tools to screen genomic and proteomic datasets of several pathogens such as Trypanosoma cruzi, Plasmodium falciparum, and Vibrio cholerae to identify potential vaccine candidates (PVC). Further, as a case study, we performed a detailed analysis of the genomic and proteomic dataset of T. cruzi (CL Brenner and Y strain) to shortlist eight proteins as possible vaccine antigen candidates using properties such as secretory/surface-exposed nature, low transmembrane helix (< 2), essentiality, virulence, antigenic, and non-homology with host/gut flora proteins. Subsequently, highly antigenic and immunogenic MHC class I, MHC class II and B cell epitopes were extracted from top-ranking vaccine targets. The designed vaccine construct containing 24 epitopes, 3 adjuvants, and 4 linkers was analysed for its physicochemical properties using different tools, including docking analysis. Immunological simulation studies suggested significant levels of T-helper, T-cytotoxic cells, and IgG1 will be elicited upon administration of such a putative multi-epitope vaccine construct. The vaccine construct is predicted to be soluble, stable, non-allergenic, non-toxic, and to offer cross-protection against related Trypanosoma species and strains. Further, studies are required to validate safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine.

Features and thresholds. The features used in Vax-ELAN include subcellular localization 26 , secretory/ non-secretory protein 27 , stability 28 , cleavage sites 29 , adhesion property 30 , CTL epitope prediction, MHC class-I binding 31 , transmembrane helix prediction 32 , essentiality 33 , virulence 34 , molecular weight 28 , non-homology with host proteins, etc.

In Supplementary Table 1 , we summarize various research studies to provide the rationale for the selection of particular features and thresholds. For example, Pizza et al. reported that the main cause of failed cloning and expression of 250 out of 600 vaccine candidates from Neisseria meningitidis B was due to the presence of more than one transmembrane spanning region (TM) 6 . Thus, we decided to have no more than two predicted TMs as an a priori requirement. Further, to avoid autoimmunity, the vaccine targets should not be similar to human proteins, therefore BLASTp was utilized to filter those proteins having > 30% identity with human proteins [E-value < 0.005] 35 . Because the immune system readily recognizes surface-exposed proteins on the pathogen, predicting the subcellular localization of the proteins serves as one of the major criteria for designing a vaccine candidate. Therefore, we used tools such as PSORTb2.0, WoLF PSORT, TargetP and CELLO 36, 37 to identify the localization of proteins as extracellular, outer membrane, cytoplasmic, periplasmic, and inner membrane.

To compute these features, we used different bioinformatics and immunoinformatics tools/databases such as TargetP 26 34 and microbial virulence database [MvirDB] 43 (Table 1) .

Vax-ELAN has the provision to scan protein sequences (or proteomes) using multiple strategies (See Supplementary Fig. 1 ). For instance, in strategy 1, we used subcellular localization prediction programs to identify outer membrane and periplasmic proteins. Since, there are no specific algorithms available for protozoa or parasites, we used tools such as PSORTB (Strategy 1A) as well as WoLF PSORTB (Strategy 1B) for the prediction of subcellular localization (See Supplementary Fig. 1 ).

Subsequently, we employed various filters to prioritize proteins based on features that are associated with antigenicity, including adhesion, allergenicity, and non-homology with the host proteome. The filtering strategy has been reported to find vaccine targets in Shigella sonnei 52 , Brucella sp. 53 and Helicobacter pylori 54 .

Pearce et al. 55 had reported the induction of protective immunity against Schistosoma mansoni by vaccination with schistosome paramyosin (Sm97), a nonsurface parasite antigen in a mouse model 55 www.nature.com/scientificreports/ strategy 2 (without sub-cellular localisation filter) in Vax-ELAN, so that there is minimal risk of filtering important (non-surface) antigens. In another alternative approach based upon inclusion (strategy 4), we use all possible tools (without elimination/filtering) to perform a comprehensive evaluation of a given protein sequence.

In this approach, we also convert the outputs from different tools (N) into binaries (1/0) using threshold values (Supplementary Tables 2, 3) . Second, a row-wise sum corresponding to all the properties [i.e., S i ] was computed. This is followed by the computation of probability value (P i = S i /N). Higher P i indicates the propensity of a given protein molecule to possess desirable properties in order to be a good vaccine candidate (Supplementary Table 4 ).

For instance, trans-sialidases (TS) were found to be among the top-ranking hits (with a comparatively higher P i value of 0.75). TS have been reported to be important vaccine candidates in numerous preclinical immunological studies in TC-CLB (Supplementary Table 5 ). Likewise, important vaccine targets were reported as top-scoring In the next section, we describe the approach for building a machine learning-based tool using components of the Vax-ELAN framework. Table 1 ) are supported by literature evidence there is no guarantee of optimality when they are used in machine learning systems. Therefore, we decided to optimise these cut-offs using a quantitative approach. For this reason, we collected protein sequences (antigenic) with experimental evidence from different organisms and labelled them as examples of a positive dataset (see, VaxiDL supplementary). Similarly, another dataset consisting of non-immunogenic proteins (negative dataset) was also compiled. Next, we compared the distributions of each property in the positive and negative datasets. Subsequently, we harnessed Receiver Operating Curves (ROC) to find thresholds at which positive and negative examples could be discriminated against (See Supplementary Fig. 2 ). With the help of optimized thresholds generated for each property (Supplementary Table 6 ), we converted the numerical/categorical values of each property into a binary score (0 or 1).

A dataset containing positive and negative protein sequences (PVCs) was compiled using text data mining and manual curation. A total of 11 biological and 1436 physicochemical features were computed for the dataset using several bioinformatics tools. Further, this dataset was subdivided into training, testing, and validation datasets, followed by scaling and normalization of data. Next, a DL model with Fully Connected Layers (FCLs) was constructed, hyper-tuned and trained. The Vaxi-DL model was benchmarked against known PVC prediction tools such as VaxiJen and Vaxign-ML. The preliminary results have shown that the Vaxi-DL model surpassed other PVC-prediction servers in terms of accuracy and efficiency (See, https:// vac. kamal rawal. in/ vaxidl/). Areas under the receiver operating characteristics curves (AUC) were primarily used to assess the algorithm. On an independent dataset, the algorithm achieved an AUC of 0.90 (95% CI 0.91-0.93) for detecting potential vaccine candidates (Manuscript in Preparation).

Screening of proteomes of pathogens to shortlist vaccine candidates. Using Vax-ELAN (strategy 4), we screened proteomes of 21 pathogens [seven bacterial, four fungal, five protozoan, and five viral pro- Evaluation of experimentally known antigenic and non-antigenic proteins. Protective antigens are proteins that can evoke an adaptive immune response against infectious and non-infectious diseases 64 . To begin with, we collected four datasets of protective antigens belonging to bacteria, protozoa, fungi, and viruses. Each set is composed of antigenic and non-antigenic sequences collected from previously reported resources such as Protegen 65 . For example, we collected 1237 bacterial antigen sequences as a positive dataset (Supplementary File 2). To create a negative/control dataset, we randomly selected those proteins (from the same species) which had less than 10% sequence similarity with sequences belonging to the positive dataset. We also removed redundancies in each dataset by filtering protein sequences that had sequence similarities of more than 30% 36 . Thus, the filtered positive dataset had 670 unique bacterial antigens whereas 677 sequences were obtained for the negative dataset 66 . Similarly, we created independent datasets for protozoan, fungal, and viral pathogens (Supplementary Table 8 ). Subsequently, we applied the Vax-ELAN tool on sequences of positive and negative datasets (Supplementary Fig. 3a-d, Fig. 2 ). We found that known antigens had comparatively higher P i values when compared to non-antigens (Mann-Whitney U test, p-value < 0.005). Vax-ELAN pipeline for prediction of vaccine candidates. T. cruzi protein sequences were screened based on several parameters such as cellular localization 26 , transmembrane helices 27 , instability index value 28 , allergenicity 67 , antigenicity 66 , the probability of having adhesion-like characteristics 30 , and non-homology with human proteins. Additionally, the T. cruzi proteins were also screened against the Database of Essential Genes [DEG] 33 Supplementary Fig. 4) .

Alternate strategies adopted for protein filtering. Apart from the methods mentioned in the previous section, we also used alternate strategies to identify potential vaccine targets from T. cruzi CL Brenner (TC-CLB). For example, in one of the experiments on proteome screening, we filtered TC-CLB proteins using a set of bioinformatics tools. First, we used the PSORTb tool, to check subcellular localization, followed by the BLASTp tool to evaluate Strategy-ORF-based screening of TC-CLB. To perform comprehensive screening for all possible vaccine candidates, we downloaded the T. cruzi CL Brenner and TC-Y genomes from NCBI to find out all possible ORFs. We used Prodigal 68 to predict 121,349 in the genome. Next, the predicted ORFs were subjected to evaluation with tools such as WoLF PSORT/PSORTB, BLAST, ProtParam, Vaxijen, and Fungal RV to filter proteins.

Comparison of different strategies to find top ranking proteins. We collected the top-ranking hits from different strategies and used python-based programs to find common and unique proteins (See, Supplementary File-B). Shortlisted proteins reported from multiple strategies were used in subsequent steps such as epitope prediction and vaccine construction.

Interspecies and inter-strain comparison of trypanosoma. We retrieved proteomes from thirteen strains of T. cruzi (See Table 2 ) and four related species of Trypanosoma (See Supplementary File 3). Subsequently, we applied the Vax-ELAN server to obtain top-ranking hits using strategy 4.

epitopes. Numerous studies have suggested that epitope-based antigens can induce protective immunity against different infectious agents [69] [70] [71] . Various methods have been described in the literature to determine the B and T-cell epitopes which include; functional assays wherein the antigen is sometimes mutated and antibodyantigen interaction is evaluated, 3D structure analysis of antigen-antibody complexes or screening the peptide library of antibody binding, utilization of MHC multimers, and lymphoproliferation by ELISPOT assays 72 . Apart from these time-consuming and expensive experimental techniques, scores of computational methods have also been developed in the past few years. In the subsequent section, we shall describe different approaches for the prediction of B-cell, MHC-I, and MHC-II epitopes in potential vaccine candidates.

Selection of linear B-cell epitopes. Linear B-cell epitopes are effective antigenic peptide sequences for stimulating B-cell immune responses. There are different methods for B-cell epitope predictions which can be classified into sequence-based and machine learning-based methods. We used multiple tools for predictions which include BCEPRED 73 , ABCPred 74 , and BepiPred 75 servers (See, Supplementary File-C). We selected the top-scoring epitopes simultaneously predicted by different servers for the final vaccine peptide. Besides, we also used VaxiJen 2.0 along with the IEDB server conservancy analysis to rank and shortlist epitopes. To illustrate, only those epitopes which had shown 100% conservation were selected (Fig. 3 ). 78 and NetMHC 81 tools. Different tools for predictions were used during the study but for brevity, we shall describe results from one of the best-known tools (i.e., NetCTL) in subsequent sections.

NetCTL1.2 server has demonstrated comparatively highlevel accuracy for CTL epitope predictions therefore a docker image of this tool was created for its execution on local systems (See, Supplementary File-D). It predicts the MHC-class I binding peptide sequences, with proteasome C-terminal cleavage and transporter associated with TAP efficiency (Transporter associated with Antigen Processing). Using this server, the CTL epitopes were predicted based on default parameters and cut-offs [MHC supertype A1, the threshold as 0.75, and weight on C-terminal cleavage as 0.15, and weight on TAP transport efficiency as 0.05]. Further, these epitopes were subjected to antigenic propensity analysis using the VaxiJen 2.0 and immunogenicity analysis (by IEDB class-1 Immunogenicity servers). The epitopes showing poor scores, or overlaps were discarded (Fig. 4) .

Prediction of HTL epitopes was performed using the IEDB-MHC-II binding tool (http:// tools. iedb. org/ mhcii/). This tool utilizes different methods to predict the epitopes, including a consensus method combining NN-align, SMM-align, and other combinatorial approaches. Epitopes obtained through the MHC-II Binding server were subjected to allergenicity prediction using the AlgPred 82 and AllerTop 83 servers. Next, using the VaxiJen 2.0 server, non-allergenic epitopes were tested for their antigenic propensity. To predict the toxicity status of epitopes, the antigenic epitopes were subjected to the ToxinPred server 84 . Finally, by employing the IFNepitope server 15 , IFN gamma induction analysis was performed on the non-toxic epitopes. Epitopes that possess the potential to induce the release of IFN gamma were selected as potential epitope candidates for vaccine construction ( The assemblage of multi-epitope vaccine candidate sequence. Three potential vaccine candidates were constructed from top-ranking B-Cell, CTL, and HTL epitopes predicted using various bioinformatics tools. Immunogenicity of the constructs was enhanced by adding adjuvants such as β-defensin [ www.nature.com/scientificreports/ filtered using the RV pipeline, were joined with each other through the GGGS linker. Next, the AAY linker was used to connect the CTL epitope to the HTL epitope sequence as well as all the HTL epitopes with each other. The KK linker was used to bridge the HTL epitope to the BCL epitopes as well as the BCL epitopes with each other. Finally, an EAAAK linker was added at the end to improve the stability of the constructs.

Evaluation of antigenicity and allergenicity of vaccine construct. The antigenic propensity prediction for the vaccine construct was performed through VaxiJen 2.0 and ANTIGENpro (http:// scrat ch. prote omics. ics. uci. edu/) servers. The VaxiJen tool is based on the principle of auto cross-covariance [ACC] transformation of protein sequences into vectors using the physicochemical properties of amino acids. The AlgPred and AllerTOP (http:// www. ddg-pharm fac. net/ Aller TOP) servers were used to predict the allergenicity of vaccine constructs. AlgPred is a web-based tool for predictions of allergens that combines Prediction of the secondary structure of the construct. PSIPRED 86 and CFSSP 87 tools were employed for secondary structure analysis. The consensus of both tools was taken into consideration. PSIPRED 3.2 is a freely accessible online server that utilizes a position-specific iterated BLAST for the identification and selection of specific sequences that show significant similarity with the designed vaccine construct. Further, it is reported to show a Q3 score of 81.6% and is available at http:// bioinf. cs. ucl. ac. uk/ psipr ed/. CFSSP (Chou and Fasman Secondary Structure Prediction Server) is an online protein secondary structure prediction server. This server predicts regions of the secondary structure of the protein sequence such as alphahelix, beta-sheet, and turns from the amino acid sequence in a linear sequential graphical view. CFSSP implements the Chou-Fasman algorithm, which is based on an analysis of the relative frequencies of each amino acid in alpha helices, beta sheets, and turns based on the known protein structures solved by X-ray crystallography.

Tertiary structure assessment of the vaccine construct. For homology modelling, the final multi-epitope vaccine construct was subjected to the Iterative Threading ASSEmbly Refinement (I-TASSER) 88 server (https:// zhang lab. ccmb. med. umich. edu/I-TASSER/). It is used for generating automated protein structures and performing predictions. It is reported to design a 3D atomic model by utilizing the multiple threading alignments and iterative structural assembly simulations of the submitted amino acid sequence.

Refinement of the tertiary structure. Using the I-TASSER server, a three-dimensional model of the chimeric protein was obtained. Next, we refined the 3D model using two-step refinement process consisting of 3Drefine 89 (http:// sysbio. rnet. misso uri. edu/ 3Drefi ne/) and GalaxyRefine 90 (http:// galaxy. seokl ab. org/ cgi-bin/ submit. cgi? type= REFINE) online protein structure refinement servers. The 3Drefine refinement protocol utilizes iterative optimization of hydrogen bonding network combined with atomic-level energy minimization on the optimized model using a composite physics and knowledge-based force field for efficient protein structure refinement. Whereas GalaxyRefine rebuilds side chains and performs side-chain repacking and subsequent overall structure relaxation by molecular dynamics simulation.

Validation of the model stability. Validation is essential for the evaluation of stability and to find inherent errors that might be present in the predicted 3D protein models. For validation of the 3D model, the ProSA-web server (https:// prosa. servi ces. came. sbg. ac. at/ prosa. php) was used to calculate the overall quality score in context with all the known protein structures. For generating the Ramachandran plot, MolProbity and RAMPAGE servers were used. MolProbity (http:// molpr obity. bioch em. duke. edu/) is an all-atom structure validation online server that offers Ramachandran analysis. Ramachandran plots are used to visualize the energetically allowed and disallowed dihedral angles, psi [ψ], and phi [ϕ], of amino acids. RAMPAGE (http:// mordr ed. bioc. cam. ac. uk/ ~rapper/ rampa ge. php) is another freely accessible server that integrates the PROCHECK 91 principle for validation of the protein model by applying a Ramachandran plot and segregating the Glycine and Proline residues plot.

Prediction of discontinuous B-cell epitopes for the vaccine construct. Antibodies must interact with antigen epitopes to remove the infectious agent. Therefore, the prediction of conformational epitopes such as discontinuous B-cell epitopes is important. It has been found that discontinuous B-cell epitopes comprise residues remotely located in the primary structure that are brought into proximity due to the folding of the protein and 90% of B-cell epitopes are discontinuous 92 . There are several tools for discontinuous B-cell epitopes prediction such as BEPro 93 , Ellipro 94 , and Epitopia 95 . Ellipro is based on the notion that residues that protrude from the protein surface are more accessible for antibody binding and that these protruding residues can be identified by treating the protein as an ellipsoid. Therefore, we employed ElliPro (http:// tools. iedb. org/ ellip ro/) for discontinuous B cell epitope predictions.

Molecular docking of the vaccine construct with TLR-4 and several HLA alleles. Molecular docking is an important tool for studying interactions amongst biological molecules. We employed molecular docking tools to find out the effect of vaccine construct with TLR-4 and HLA alleles. Since the majority of adjuvants originate from microbial components known as PAMPs [pathogen-associated molecular patterns], the immune system responds to these PAMPs by using Toll-like receptors [TLRs] 96 Evaluation of genetic diversity. In order to develop a broad-spectrum T. cruzi vaccine, the prioritized proteins were scrutinized for their genetic diversity among fully annotated proteomes of 13 T. cruzi strains and different species (Supplementary Table 10 ). Protein sequences from these strains which are positive for that particular protein, were downloaded from NCBI RefSeq 103 and aligned to predict conserved regions using CLC Main Workbench 21.0.2 (QIAGEN). Evolutionary distances (p-distances) among variant sites were also calculated for prioritized proteins using Mega 6.0 104 . The predicted epitopes were also checked for their sequence divergence among different strains and species of Trypanosoma. Each predicted epitope was further checked for antigenicity using VaxiJen (threshold value = 0.4) 54 . In addition, we also mapped epitopes to genomic sequences. For this purpose, we first reverse translated the epitope sequences and thereafter used pairwise alignment tools for mapping. We also checked the conservancy of epitopes through IEDB conservancy analysis tool 105 .

Defining a potential vaccine candidate (PVC). A Potential Vaccine Candidate (PVC) could be defined as the protein or corresponding DNA/RNA sequence that possesses properties of an "ideal vaccine" such as nonhomology with the host (i.e., human) proteins to avoid the generation of a potential autoimmune response 106 , the lack of transmembrane regions to facilitate expression, antigenicity, adhesion-like properties, immunogenicity, a molecular weight of < 110 kDa, non-homology with the gut flora proteome, surface-exposure/secretion, and the presence of anchoring and/or secretion signals. Based on sequence similarity, proteins relevant to microbial pathogenesis would also be highly ranked. For our model, we label these desirable properties P i [i = 1, 2, 3….n] (Supplementary Table 9 ).

Selection, ranking, and filtering of PVCs. To understand the distribution of properties in the T. cruzi CL-Brenner (TC-CLB) proteome, we used python-based scripts to characterize the whole proteome using various bioinformatics tools. During the analysis, we found that 91.46% of all proteins [i.e., 19 ,602] have a molecular weight < 110 kDa, 13.20% of proteins are secretory and 7.12% are extracellular. Also, 84.80% of the proteome is dissimilar to human proteins. Likewise, we observed similar trends in proteomes of four related species and thirteen different strains of Trypanosoma (Table 2 ). In addition, we computed distributions of properties in other pathogens for comparative purposes (Supplementary Tables 11a-11c ).

Using the PSORTb tool (Strategy 1A), we screened 19,602 proteins of the reference proteome of TC-CLB [Accession ID: NZ_AAHK00000000] and found that 1846 proteins were predicted to be localized in the periplasm, extracellular matrix, and outer membrane of the cell. Next, we used the PSORTb score (threshold set to 9.5) as an additional filter to shortlist 653 proteins. Alternatively, WoLF-PSORT (Strategy 1B) predicted 7274 proteins, localized in the plasma membrane and extracellular matrix. Despite using two different approaches (1A and 1B), we observed that most of the proteins (i.e., mucin TcMUCII, Mucin Associated Surface Protein (MASP), trans-sialidase, hypothetical protein, dispersed gene family (DGF-1) and subtilisin-like peptidase) were present in the top-ranking filtered list of both the approaches.

undesired cross-reactivity of vaccines with the human host, the proposed vaccine candidate must be different Instability analysis. Protein stability is of crucial importance for the efficient presentation of antigenic peptides on MHC, which plays a decisive role in triggering strong immune reactions. Using ProtParam, the protein instability index was determined and proteins having an Instability Index (II) less than 40 were selected. This led to shortlisting of 138 proteins (out of 572) that were predicted to be stable.

To find out non-allergenic proteins in our list, we performed a BLASTp search against the Allergen Online database and found 137 proteins to be non-allergenic.

To determine the antigenicity of the shortlisted proteins for vaccine construction, VaxiJen 2.0 was employed. Proteins having antigenicity greater than 0.5 were selected for subsequent analysis. We identified 122 antigenic proteins out of 137 proteins using this tool.

Adhesion prediction. Next, we performed adhesion prediction using FungalRV with a threshold value of greater or equal to − 1.2. Several studies have shown that adhesins are vital in initiating pathogen-based infections 107 . Therefore, it seemed practical to target these proteins for vaccine development. A total of 100 proteins (out of 122) were predicted to possess desired properties similar to adhesin proteins. We used these top 100 proteins for subsequent analysis as a filtered list. It was also found that several hits belonging to the same gene/ protein family such as trans-sialidases, and mucin-associated surface protein were present in the top 100 list.

In VAX-Elan, we have also included an option to filter (or include) multi-copy genes/proteins for subsequent analysis 108 . (Table 3) . We also used alternative strategies (see "Methods") which also reported these PVCs in their topranking lists. Next, we independently checked these proteins as PVCs from scientific literature using text mining and manual curation approaches (Supplementary . We ranked the epitopes based upon antigenicity value generated by the VaxiJen 2.0 tool (threshold: 0.5; target organism used as 'Parasite'). Further, we found that approximately 295 epitopes were predicted by multiple servers. In Table 4 , we show the highest-ranked epitope found in each protein, shortlisted for further analysis.

T-cell epitopes [CTL] prediction. First, we identified 16,385 CTL epitopes in the eight shortlisted proteins. Second, we found 221 epitopes (out of 16,385) that were predicted by four different prediction tools namely NETMHC, EpiJen, Propred1, and NetCTL. Third, we selected eight high-scoring epitopes for subsequent work (Table 5) .

With the IEDB MHC-II prediction tool, HTL cell epitopes were predicted with the highest binding corresponding to the alleles from the human 7-allele reference set i.e., HLA-DRB Table 3 . Ranking of unique proteins with the highest antigenic score. Here the hypothetical protein has displayed similarity with regulator sigma E protease during the Blast search. Table 6 ).

The assemblage of multi-epitope subunit vaccine construct. The vaccine (V1) was constructed from high-scoring CTLs, B-cell epitopes, and HTL epitopes. To enhance its immunogenicity, a Beta-defensin adjuvant [Accession ID: AGV15514.1] was obtained from NCBI and incorporated into V1 (Fig. 6) .

Evaluation of antigenicity and allergenicity of the vaccine constructs. The predicted vaccine constructs were labelled as non-allergenic as predicted by AlgPred and AllerTop tools. The antigenicity value of the vaccine constructs was observed highest for V1 (1.06) as evaluated by Vaxijen 2.0 ( Table 7) .

Analysis of solubility and physicochemical properties. Using ProtParam, the theoretical molecular weight of the vaccine construct V1 was found to be 42.3 kDa constructed with Beta-defensin as an adjuvant (406 amino acids) whereas the theoretical isoelectric point [pI] of the protein was found to be 9.70 which suggest that the vaccine construct is highly charged. The instability index [II] was estimated to be 30.95, indicating that the vaccine construct is stable (II < 40 indicates stability). V1 was predicted to be thermostable (Aliphatic index-78.37). V1 was also found to be hydrophilic (the predicted hydropathicity or GRAVY came out to be − 0.062). The presence of negative value scores suggests hydrophilic epitopes that are likely to be present in the outer surface and have (Fig. 7a-d) . The presence of random coils in the vaccine construct suggests the existence of natively unfolded protein regions that can be identified by antibodies that are produced in response to infection 109 .

Tertiary structure assessment of the vaccine construct. The tertiary structure models of the chimeric construct were predicted by the I-TASSER server by employing several threading templates [1kj6, 5nf2A, 1kj6A, 5ke1, 4om9A, 5ke1A, 4kh3A]. Out of 5 predicted results, model 1 was found to be the best one based upon the scores. In this study, the highest C-score model, derived from the homology modelling was selected for subsequent refinement protocol (Fig. 8a) . The TM-score is defined to assess the topological similarity of the two protein structures. The TM-Score for our vaccine construct was found to be 0.56 ± 0.15 and the RMSD value was 9.6 ± 4.6 Å. It has been reported that a model with a TM score greater than 0.5, shows accurate topology, whereas a model with a TM score less than 0.17 indicates nonspecific similarity.

Refinement of the tertiary structure. The putative chimeric vaccine model was refined by the 3Drefine server (http:// sysbio. rnet. misso uri. edu/ 3Drefi ne/) and subsequently by GalaxyRefine (http:// galaxy. seokl ab. org/ cgibin/ submit. cgi? type= REFINE). The 3D-refine server-generated five models, out of which top-ranking model having favourable parameters such as lowest 3Drefine score (29,567.2), GDT-HA (0.96), RMSD (0.37 Å), lowest RWPlus score (− 63,611.70), and MolProbity (3.55). We also shortlisted Model 1 (from GalaxyRefine server) using a clash score (20.8), a score of poor rotamers (0.3), and the Ramachandran plot with a statistical score (89.4%) for downstream validation studies (Fig. 8b,c) .

Validation of model stability. Ramachandran plot analysis of the protein model by ProCHECK-web predicted that 82.4% of amino acids were present in favoured regions. Moreover, 13.7% of the residues were present in the allowed regions, and only 1.5% of proteins were present in the disallowed or outlier boundary (Fig. 8d ) indicating the quality of the model. The ProSA-web server authenticated the overall quality and errors that may potentially arise in the refined model. The refined model (obtained in this study) was considered to be appropriate with a Z-score of − 2.9 (Fig. 8e) .

Prediction of discontinuous B-cell epitopes. Ellipro estimated the five discontinuous B-cell epitopes and revealed the presence of 221 total residues among them (with score variation from 0.61 to 0.75) ( Table 9 , Fig. 9 ).

Molecular docking of the chimeric protein with TLR-4. The CastP 110 server was employed for determining protein binding and hydrophobic contact sites on the protein surface. One of the potential binding pockets (A) was identified for the interaction with a TLR-4 receptor. It was found that the molecular surface area of the pocket ' A' was 6008.1 Å 2 with a molecular surface volume of 39,003.9 Å 3 , the mouth molecular area was about 1088.07 Å 2 , and the molecular surface sum was calculated to be 1888.9 Å. CPORT predicted G1, A19, L21, C33 as active amino acid residues in the adjuvant sequences ; A52, L54, L55, G56, G57, D58, T59, G60, D68, S69, C70, F72,  M84, G87, T137, G138, G140, S141, Y142, T143, C144, G145, T146, C148, P174, G176, I178, I179, R180, L181,  Y183, L184, R185, F186, A187, Y189, N215, A255, G300, C301, P306, L307, L308, L309, F310, V311, F312, F313,  K314, K315, V316, H317, I318, N319, L320, K321, S326, L328, F329, P330, L333, C345, L348, V349, L350, A351,  L352, C353, C354, C355, P356, S357, D373, L388, L389, L390, S391, S392, G393, I394, L395, V396, V398, L399 from the chimeric protein joined with linker sequences 111 .

For the highest-ranking docked complex, the ClusPro tool revealed the lowest total intermolecular energy (− 973.2 kcal/mol), indicating a good interaction between V1 and TLR-4. The HDOCK server predicted the binding energy for the protein-protein complex as − 314.02 kcal/mol (Fig. 10) . The refinement of PatchDock docking results, as obtained by the Firedock result also showed the lowest global energy values (Table 10) .

Codon optimization of the chimeric protein. JCAT results revealed that the optimized codon sequence has a length of 1308 nucleotides and its CAI (Codon Adaptation Index) was predicted to be 0.98, with an average of Table 9 . Discontinuous B-cell epitopes predicted by the ElliPro. Two hundred and twenty-one residues were found to be located in five discontinuous B-cell epitopes of the refined vaccine model. Characterization of the immune profile of the vaccine construct. With C-ImmSim, the immune response of the final vaccine construct was analysed. Results of the simulated immune responses indicated an increased surge in the induction of secondary and tertiary immune responses. At the first dose, a high surge of IgM and IgG1 antibodies was predicted. However, these titters increased exponentially with the second and third dose. Furthermore, an increase in active B-cell, CTL, and HTL cell populations was predicted for all doses (Fig. 13) .

Evaluation of genetic diversity. Protein sequences of the prioritized proteins were extracted from 13 T. cruzi annotated proteomes which were aligned to predict conserved regions (Supplementary Table 13 ). Five proteins namely DNAJ chaperon protein, subtilisin-like serine peptidase, DGF-1, MASP, and trans-sialidase displayed strong homology (above 80%) across 13 different strains of T. cruzi.

In the context of the DNAJ protein, the estimated evolutionary distance (p-distance) was found to be 0.005 (across 13 strains) and 0.746 (across species). Whereas for TS, p-distance was found to be 0.234 (across strains) and 0.795 (across species). Next, we extracted all the copies of TS from TC-CLB proteome and computed evolutionary divergence (0.616) as well (Supplementary Tables 14a-14c) .

Estimates of evolutionary divergence between sequences and the number of amino acid differences per site among sequences are shown along with the standard error in Supplementary Tables 14a-14c. We found that most of the epitopes (belonging to the top eight proteins) were mapped/aligned to the conserved regions. For example, a 15-mer HTL epitope, "TGVSKNGRQLRVSGK" (from DNAJ protein), was found to be completely conserved (100%) across 13 different strains and four species (see Fig. 14 and Supplementary Table 15 ). Next, a predicted CTL epitope ('SSDADPTVV') from trans-sialidase protein sequences was also found to be conserved (Fig. 14) . Likewise, we performed epitope conservancy analysis using the IEDB tool and observed that all the predicted epitopes were conserved across different strains of T. cruzi (Supplementary Table 16 , Supplementary  File 4) . In addition, we also mapped epitopes (after reverse translation) on genomic sequences of Trypanosoma strains and species to check the conservation at the genomic level (See "Supplementary Website"). Further, we extracted 5750 copies of TS from different proteomes of T cruzi. Thereafter, we searched for the presence of epitopes in variants of TS using the Smith Water-Mann algorithm as well as using the IEDB conservancy tool. We found that the epitopes were present in the proteins with varying levels of conservation (See Supplementary Files Y_G and H in Supplementary File 5). 

The study reported here comprises a comprehensive approach to utilize informatics and computer algorithms towards the prediction of vaccine targets in pathogens. Our work combines immuno-informatics approaches and reverse vaccinology methods to design an in-silico multi-epitope subunit vaccine that can offer protection against CD. The datasets and frameworks are also used to develop a new machine learning and deep learning system for the prediction of vaccine candidates in general. We have created a resource base for the scientific community working in the area of CD vaccine design [https:// tinyu rl. com/ CDWor k800]. We used several strategies to shortlist potential vaccine candidates. The goal was to obtain non-allergenic, antigenic, non-toxic, conserved B-cell, CD8+ and CD4+ epitopes that were assembled into three separate vaccine constructs, V1, V2, and V3. Our major findings include several unique vaccine antigens that are antigenic, immunogenic, and safe (showing no homology with human proteins and the proteome of the gut flora). Further, the designed vaccine constructs are also found to be, theoretically, soluble, thermostable, amenable for expression in model systems, and likely to interact with other proteins. Structurally, the designed constructs show a likelihood of favourable interactions with the TLR-4 on professional antigen-presenting cells. Our vaccine construct consists of epitopes derived from multiple protein molecules (PVCs) which have exhibited the potential to be PVCs in various independent experimental studies. The designed vaccine construct is likely to offer cross-protection since the selected proteins and predicted epitopes used in generating the cocktail vaccine exhibited considerable conservation across the related Trypanosoma species/strains. In the past decade, different research groups have used several strategies ranging from stages of pathogenesis 112 ; immunogenic assays 109 , subtractive proteomics 9 , and as well as properties/filters (Supplementary Table 9 ) to determine candidates for their respective pathogens. Different authors have used different orders of these properties [P 1 , P 2 …. P n ] as a combined filter to reach the final list of PVCs. Our study explains the impact of the order of applications of these properties on the outcome. Since no proteome-wide studies have been The objective was to screen proteomes diversely to select all best-ranking protein molecules (i.e., PVCs) with desired properties. One of the unique highlights is that we have examined the distribution of different properties across the pathogens' proteome as well as on positive and control datasets. Further, we also applied Vax-ELAN on recently sequenced Y strain. We observed that top ranking candidates (in both CLB and Y strains) includes TS, Mucin, and Mucin associated surface proteins.

Researchers have initiated several efforts to develop vaccines against CD but issues related to a variety of T. cruzi strains, the genetic variability of the host, complex genomic structure 24 , significant phenotypic variation, and variable behaviour of pathogen (in vitro and in vivo) in context of pathophysiology, virulence, tropism, and immunological responses, have created several obstacles 113 . Further, T. cruzi is known to be a complex organism with multiple developmental forms with transient expression of different antigens. The problem is compounded by a wide variety of strains, antigenic shifts during different life stages, making proper immunization against the www.nature.com/scientificreports/ parasite an improbable task. The ability of T. cruzi to modulate and evade host immune responses and influence host-parasite interactions allows the parasite to survive through novel mechanisms 114 . Several vaccine candidates have been reported for CD vaccine development programs across the world. These include Tc24 [and its modified Tc24-C4 derivative], TSA-1, ASP-2, TS, TSSA CD8 epitope, Tc52, TcG1, TcG2, TcG4, TcVac2, TcVac4, and MASP 25 . It is interesting to note that several of these candidates appeared in the final protein list used for our final vaccine construct. In one of the research studies, Michel-Todo et al. extracted T. cruzi epitopes from several antigens using publicly available databases 115 . They prioritized a set of epitopes based on sequence conservation criteria, projected population coverage of Latin America population, and biological features using in-silico methods and selected CD8+ T cell, CD4+ T, and B-cell epitopes with < 70% identical to human or human microbiome protein sequences. As a benchmark, we also compared epitopes 115 with epitopes identified in our study using the VaxiJen tool (Supplementary File-F) .

The in-silico approach to design a multi-epitope vaccine construct for Chagas disease presents challenges as a protein-based vaccine given the complexities of producing such candidates as experimental soluble proteins 109 suitable for scale-up production and purification. However, we have recently embarked upon an mRNA vaccination approach for Chagas disease that might obviate the need for expression and purification steps 116 . We are now working to incorporate the findings here into our mRNA vaccination program.

Therapeutic interventions for the prevention and elimination of Chagas disease require novel treatment and immunization methods that can protect people at risk and infected populations while providing them with a good quality of life. This study is aimed at developing putative multi-epitope vaccines against CD, a protozoan infection caused by T. cruzi. The disease is endemic in Latin America and has impacted other parts of the world. In this study, computational approaches and a reverse vaccinology pipeline were used to screen the complete genomic and proteomic sequences for predicting potential vaccine candidates and designing in-silico chimeric vaccine constructs against the T. cruzi CL Brenner. Multiple antigenic B-cell, CD8+, and CD4+ epitopes were assembled into three non-allergenic, antigenic, and non-toxic constructs that can act as a prophylactic potential multi-epitope vaccine construct. Appropriate linkers and adjuvant sequences were also used to enhance the stability, effectiveness, as well as immune response of the engineered vaccine constructs. The designed vaccine construct has suitable structural, physicochemical, and immunological properties which can strongly stimulate both humoral and cellular immune responses in humans. However, experimental validation for efficacy and safety www.nature.com/scientificreports/ is needed along with pre-clinical studies before human immunization. Planning for such studies in appropriate mouse models of T. cruzi and CCC is in progress.

All raw data were obtained from open sources and have been cited and deposited in Datasets S1 and also available on our website. 

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This work was supported by a Grant from the Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation, USA, Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine, Houston USA. We also acknowledge the grant provided by SERB, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India (File Number: CVD/2020/000842).

The authors declare no competing interests.

The online version contains supplementary material available at https:// doi. org/ 10. 1038/ s41598-021-96863-x.Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to K.R.Reprints and permissions information is available at www.nature.com/reprints.Publisher's note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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