Preliminary study on designing the binder of sperm-1 synthetic vaccine using sequence-based methods and molecular docking.

Objective: The main objective of this study is to design a synthetic vaccine from the binder of sperm-1 (BSP1). Materials and Methods: This study was carried out using bioinformatics-related techniques. BSP-1 has been chosen as one of the biomarkers of a ruminant's male fertility. We hypothesize that the BSP1 synthetic vaccines, which contain T-cell epitopes, can produce antibodies more effectively for the development of a sperm fertility detection kit. A sequence of BSP-1 peptides A0A0K1YXR5 from Bubalus bubalis (Domestic water buffalo) origin has been decided to be used to develop the peptide vaccine. Results: In this study, we succeeded in making synthetic vaccines from BSP-1 with a peptide sequence of LPEDSVPDEERVFPFTYRNRKHF. The three-dimensional theoretical prediction analysis of the peptide binding pattern to its ligand, as well as the molecular docking, has also been revealed. Conclusions: A synthetic vaccine from the BSP-1 has been developed in this study with the amino acid sequence LPEDSVPDEERVFPFTYRNRKHF, which is buffer-soluble, and the three-dimensional theoretical prediction analysis of the peptide binding pattern of BSP-1 to its ligand, as well as molecular docking, has also been revealed.

Frequent detection and characterization of hepatitis E virus variants in wild rats (Rattus rattus) in Indonesia.

One hundred sixteen rats (Rattus rattus) captured in Indonesia from 2011 to 2012 were investigated for the prevalence of hepatitis E virus (HEV)-specific antibodies and HEV RNA. Using an ELISA based on HEV genotype 4 with an ad hoc cutoff value of 0.500, 18.1 % of the rats tested positive for anti-HEV IgG. By nested RT-PCR, 14.7 % of the rats had rat HEV RNA, and none were positive for HEV genotype 1-4. A high HEV prevalence among rats was associated with lower sanitary conditions in areas with a high population density. Sixteen of the 17 HEV isolates obtained from infected rats showed >93.0 % nucleotide sequence identity within the 840-nucleotide ORF1-ORF2 sequence and were most closely related to a Vietnamese strain (85.9-87.9 % identity), while the remaining isolate differed from known rat HEV strains by 18.8-23.3 % and may belong to a novel lineage of rat HEV. These results suggest a wide distribution of rat HEV with divergent genomes.