Design, development, and validation of multi-epitope proteins for serological diagnosis of Zika virus infections and discrimination from dengue virus seropositivity

by Samille Henriques Pereira, Mateus S á Magalhães Serafim, Thaís de Fátima Silva Moraes, Nathalia Zini, Jônatas Santos Abrahão, Maurício Lacerda Nogueira, Jordana Grazziela Alves Coelho dos Reis, Flávia Fonseca Bagno, Flávio Guimarães da Fonseca Zika virus (ZIKV), an arbovirus from theFlaviviridae family, is the causative agent of Zika fever, a mild and frequent oligosymptomatic disease in humans. Nonetheless, on rare occasions, ZIKV infection can be associated with Guillain-Barr é Syndrome (GBS), and severe congenital complications, such as microcephaly. The oligosymptomatic disease, however, presents symptoms that are quite similar to those observed in infections caused by other frequent co-circulating arboviruses, including dengue virus (DENV). Moreover, the antigenic si milarity between ZIKV and DENV, and even with other members of theFlaviviridae family, complicates serological testing due to the high cross-reactivity of antibodies. Here, we designed, produced in a prokaryotic expression system, and purified three multiepitope proteins (ZIKV-1, ZIKV-2, and ZIKV-3) for differential diagnosis of Zika. The proteins were evaluated as antigens in ELISA tests for the detection of anti-ZIKV IgG using ZIKV- and DENV-positive human sera. The recombinant proteins were able to bind and detect anti-ZIKV antibodies without cross-reactivity with DENV-positive sera and showed no reactivity with Chikungunya virus (CHIKV)- positive sera. ZIKV-1, ZIKV-2, and ZIKV-3 proteins p...
Source: PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases - Category: Tropical Medicine Authors: Source Type: research