Bioinformatic analysis of conformational epitope peptide sequences for the effective diagnosis of Sudan Ebola Virus disease

Ebola Virus disease (EVD) is an acute infectious disease associated with very high rates of mortality and transmissibility. EVD formally known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever is a rare but deadly disease in human and nonhuman primates, with average fatality rate at 50%, and variance between 25% to 90% depending on strain type as established by World Health Organisation (WHO). High fatality rate is attributed to the lack of specific, rapid and affordable test kits availability for quick detection, noting the overlap in symptoms from other endemic diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever and cholera. Real time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), currently the gold standard deployed in the diagnosis of Ebola virus disease, exhibits major disadvantages in analyte processing time which in turn allows for an increased rate in mortality. This paper seeks to address the challenges of rapid and effective diagnostics for EVD with specific focus on the Sudan strain shortly after infection, using immunoinformatics tools to analyse multi-epitope peptides sequences from various strains of EVD in other to design affordable lateral flow test (LFT) kits hence an implied reduction in the mortality and fatality rates to a bearable minimal standard. Study showed the possibility and efficacy of LFT kit to detect rapidly the Ebola Virus Disease as chimeric construct exhibited conformity to standard test and predictions with antigenicity =0.5445, solubility =0.625, instability index =36.93, aliphatic index = 53.37, and grand average of hydropathicity (GRAVY) =-0.932. Post-peptide construct analysis further validates the tertiary construct with Z-Score =-4.54 and Ramachandran plots 93.0% core in 258 residues establishing stability and a good model construct for EVD diagnostics