Brucellosis is a well known infection among domestic animals caused by Brucella bacterium. The objective of the present study was to clone, sequence analysis and epitopes prediction of BLS gene as major B. melitensis antigens. Up to this, the full-length open reading frame for BLS gene amplified by specific primers and cloned into pTZ57R/T vector. The results of phylogeny analysis showed that BLS gene was nearly similar in different Brucella species. Online prediction software applications were also used to predict B and T-cells epitopes, secondary and tertiary structures, antigenicity ability and enzymatic degradation sites. The bioinformatics tools used in the current study were confirmed by the results of three different experimental epitope predictions. Bioinformatics analysis identified two B-cell and one T-cell epitopes for BLS antigen, respectively. Finally, a common B and T-cell epitope was predicted for BLS (37-48 and119-139 amino acids). Bioinformatics analysis showed that these regions had proper epitope characterization and so may be useful for recombinant vaccine development.

Keywords