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

In this work, we predicted 6 reliable epitopes: A, B, C, E, F/G and H. The reliability of the epitopes of the S protein was relatively better than that of the epitopes of the E protein and the M protein, indicating that the S protein is still the optimal choice for the prediction of epitopes and the development of vaccine. All of the 6 epitopes were able to achieve absolute conservation in SARS-CoV-2, and to achieve relative conservation in the data set, including SARS, etc. Therefore, the epitopes not only have the potential to be directly applied on the treatment in this disease, but also have the potential to prevent the possible threats caused by other types of coronavirus. In addition, although various factors of prediction were integrated in this work, more experimental data are needed to further verify whether all the 6 epitopes can induce the body to produce corresponding antibodies and generate specific humoral immunity, due to the limited data set and other factors.