Evaluation of VceC protein as a vaccine against the aquatic pathogenic bacterium Vibrio cholerae and design a subunit peptide vaccine based on VceC amino acid sequence

Vibrio cholerae is an aquatic pathogenic bacterium whose various strains cause diseases such as cholera, acute diarrhea, meningitis and sepsis. Due to the resistance of the strains to different antibiotics, the production of low-risk vaccines that affect all pathogenic strains can be the best method of control. Therefore, in this study, the vaccine potential of VceC outer membrane protein against V. cholerae was evaluated using bioinformatics methods. In addition to determining antigenicity, virulence, and physicochemical properties, B and T cell epitope mapping was performed to design the best peptide subunit vaccine. The results showed that the protein has optimal properties such as presence in all the studied strains, stability and long half-life, good temperature resistance, and solubility during overexpression. Numerous antigenic regions and linear and spatial epitopes were also observed along the protein sequence and structure. According to the location and antigenic properties, two linear and conformational subunit vaccines were designed that can be tested and used against the pathogenicity of different strains of V. cholerae.