Designing a Multi-Epitope Vaccine Against Small Ruminant Lentiviruses Induced Maedi Visna and Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis Among Sheeps and Goats

Small Ruminant Lentiviruses are one of the common viral agents among livestock animals mainly sheeps and goats and are responsible for fatal diseases such as Maedi-Visna and Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis, hence resulting in compromised livestock outcomes. Developing a safe and effective vaccine against these viruses, that can provide protection in broad range of host species has been a great challenge, hence we employed different bioinformatic tools to design a novel multi-epitope vaccine construct based on the envelope gene of the virus. After predicting the secondary and tertiary structure of the vaccine construct, the structural accuracy was further enhanced by refinement and the stability/binding affinity of the vaccine construct was validated by using cutting-edge computational tools such as molecular docking and molecular dynamic simulation. Furthermore, the immune system activation potential was validated via immune simulation studies followed by the codon optimization and in-silico cloning. The vaccine construct showed good levels of immunogenicity and antigenicity without any allergic/toxic effects. The study revealed that the multi-epitope vaccine shows significant potency to combat SRLVs among goats and sheep simultaneously.