A strategy for rapidly making a vaccine and treatment for the disease caused by the Wuhan-Corona Virus 2019 (COVID19)-Part two

Abstract

Presently, a majority of bioinformaticians analyze sequences by homology between the amino acid sequences of proteins. The assumption in this type of analysis is that if an identical nucleotide sequence codes for an identical peptide sequence in two different proteins in two different viruses; then, this is evidence of “descent from a common ancestor”. This is the Darwinian assumption and is the most common method of analysis. Just recently, for example, the following sequence VLLFLAFVV was identified as a common epitope in the Envelope protein (E) of both SARS and COVID19 [3] and they suggest this as the epitope for the basis of a vaccine. Their work is quite pretty. However, we feel that this may not be the best epitope on which to base a vaccine. We have two reasons. Firstly, this sequence is completely hydrophobic and that is rare in antibody-epitope interactions.