Prediction and Evolution of B Cell Epitopes of Surface Protein in SARS-CoV-2

Jerome R Lon; Yunmeng Bai; Bingxu Zhong; Fuqiang Cai; Hongli Du

All linear B cell epitopes of the surface protein were filtered according to the following criteria: (1) region with high surface probability(≥0.75), strong antigenicity(≥0) and high flexibility; (2) excluding the region with α-helix, β-sheet and glycosylation site( Table S1 ) and ABCpred(cut off to 0.51) (Table S2 ). Based on the results obtained with these methods and artificial optimization, 4 potential linear B cell epitopes of the S protein were predicted(Table 2, Figure 3A ), including 601-605 aa, 656-660 aa, 676-682 aa, 808-813 aa, and they were named as the epitope A, B, C, D, respectively; 1 epitope of the E protein was selected(60-65 aa) and named as the epitope F(Table 2, Figure 3C ); 1 epitope of the M protein was selected (211-215 aa) and named as the epitope H( Table 2) .