Epitope-based chimeric peptide vaccine design against S, M and E proteins of SARS-CoV-2 etiologic agent of global pandemic COVID-19: an in silico approach

M. Shaminur Rahman; M. Nazmul Hoque; M. Rafiul Islam; Salma Akter; A. S. M. Rubayet-Ul-Alam; Mohammad Anwar Siddique; Otun Saha; Md. Mizanur Rahaman; Munawar Sultana; M. Anwar Hossain

ElliPro method is based on the location of the residue in the protein's three-dimensional (3D) 578 structure. ElliPro implements three algorithms to approximate the protein shape as an ellipsoid, 579 calculate the residue protrusion index (PI), and cluster neighboring residues based on their 580 protrusion index (PI) value. The residues lying outside of the ellipsoid covering 90% of the inner 581 core residues of the protein score highest PI of 0.9 23 . Antigenicity of full-length S (spike 582 glycoprotein), M (membrane protein) and E (envelope protein) proteins was predicted using 583 The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.30.015164 doi: bioRxiv preprint epitopes of RBD and NTD regions of S protein, full length E and M proteins were predicted by 585 "BepiPred Linear Epitope Prediction" (propensity scale method such as hidden Markov model) 53 586