Prediction and Identification of Linear Epitopes of Hemagglutinin Protein of H6 Subtype Avian Influenza Virus

The purpose of this study was to lay the foundation for developing an influenza virus epitope vaccine and establishing an specific ELISA method of subtype H6 through the Prediction of H6 subtype avian influenza virus hemagglutinin(HA) protein linear epitopes by bioinformatics methods,and the preliminary identification of immunity of the antigen epitope.According to the recent trend of influenza virus,the representative H6,H5,H7and H9 subtype of avian influenza virus hemagglutinin protein amino acid sequences were downloaded from GenBank.The conservation of amino acid sequence of H6 subtypes was analyzed and the amino acid homology of H6 to H5,H7 and H9 was compared by DNAStar software,then the antigenicity,hydrophilicity,flexibility,secondary structure and surface accessibility of sequences were predicted by on-line ExPASy and IEDB server.Furthermore,after removal of the amino acid homology region of H6 and H5,H7 and H9 subtypes,several fragments(a length of 15 amino acids) were selected,which located in the relatively conservative region of H6 subtype,and had a better results of comprehensive linear epitope prediction in B-cell,and the synthesis of the obtained dominant B cell epitope and identification of the epitope immunogenicity by conventional indirect ELISA methods were performed.The prediction obtained four linear epitopes and all of them were found to have immunogenicity,but epitope A is best and epitope B is worst.