Genome Wide Analysis of Chlamydia pneumoniae for Candidate Vaccine Development

Background: Chlamydia pneumoniae (C. pneumoniae) is a pathogen associated with respiratory tract infection of humans and its viable presence in atherosclerotic plaques is also assumed to play significant function in cardiac diseases. Unavailability of effective antimicrobial drugs has implicated the urgent need of some more disease associated vaccines that may provide relief efficiently. Thus, present study has been undertaken to analyse the whole proteome of C. pneumoniae in order to propose bacterial proteins as candidate vaccine for CAD by taking the aid of ‘Reverse Vaccinology’. Methods: Whole proteome of C. pneumoniae was downloaded and redundancy was removed by CD-HIT web server. Similarity search between proteins of C. pneumoniae and Homo sapiens was performed by BLASTP to avoid human similar proteins. Virulent proteins were selected by VirulentPred web server. Sub cellular localization of identified proteins was investigated by LocTree3 and pSORTb servers. Surface accessibility area (SAA) and antigenic epitopes prediction has been undertaken by prediction of protease specificity (POPS) and Ellipro, NetMHCpan 3.0 servers respectively. Functional significance of identified proteins was predicted through 3D model construction followed by the ligand binding site, active site and domain characterization. Results: Three reference proteins RVOM1, RVOM2, RVEC1 were predicted with the crucial role in C. pneumoniae that may be capable of inducing B cell and T cell response. Conclusion: Detailed analysis of these proteins indicated that they may be utilized as the vaccine candidates during the chlamydial infection in near future.