Exploiting bioinformatic tools to assess CP4-EPSPS peptides as potential biomarkers of genetically modified soybean

J. COSTA; M. M. MARANI; M.B.P.P. OLIVEIRA; S.A. CAMPERI; DE SOUZA DE ALMEIDA LEITE, JOSE ROBERTO

Congreso; MoniQA International Conferece 2021; 2015

The theoretical prediction of epitopes is a highly challenging task, although significantprogress has been made in finding synthetic peptides that could mimic epitopes withpotential application for diagnostic and research purposes. Presently, a large set ofcomputational tools has become available for the prediction of linear and conformationalepitopes in proteins, mostly based on T- and B-cell prediction softwares. So far, the use ofbioinformatics to predict the potential immunogenicity of peptides has been mainlyfocused on medical purposes, with some successful applications already described in thedevelopment of vaccines. Using bioinformatics, the 5-enolpyruvulshikimate-3-phosphatesynthase (CP4-EPSPS) protein, which is expressed by genetically modified soybean, wasextensively in silico analysed. The resultant peptides were evaluated for further selectionof the best candidate peptides to generate immunological response and subsequentproduction of anti-CP4-EPSPS antibodies. For this purpose, several availablecomputational tools, namely DiscoTope [1], ElliPro [2] or POPI 2.0 [3] softwares, wereused to evaluate a total of 32 sequences ranging from 10 to 25 amino acids in length,resulting from the in silico cleavage of CP4-EPSPS. The analysis enabled the successfulproposal of four peptides, namely Pc_19-32, SGTVRIPGDKSISH; Pc_67-77,GARIRKEGDTW; Pc_141-156, GVQVKSEDGDRLPVTL and Pc_312-324,KGVTVPEDRAPSM for the prospective immunorecognition of CP4-EPSPS, thusfacilitating the development of immunoassays for the detection of genetically modifiedsoybean [4]. Additionally, considering that the expression of this protein is common tomany other transgenic crops, these candidate peptides can be very useful as screeningmarkers for the presence of GMO. In spite of the wide application of bioinformatics tomedical areas, this is the first attempt to select and define potential linear epitopes for theimmunisation of animals and subsequent production of anti-CP4-EPSPS antibodies.Actually, the selected peptides and respective antibodies are currently being synthesisedaiming at developing an immunosensor for CP4-EPSPS detection.