In silico detection of SARS-CoV-2 specific B-cell epitopes and validation in ELISA for serological diagnosis of COVID-19

Sci Rep. 2021 Feb 22;11(1):4290. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-83730-y.

Abstract

Rapid generation of diagnostics is paramount to understand epidemiology and to control the spread of emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19. Computational methods to predict serodiagnostic epitopes that are specific for the pathogen could help accelerate the development of new diagnostics. A systematic survey of 27 SARS-CoV-2 proteins was conducted to assess whether existing B-cell epitope prediction methods, combined with comprehensive mining of sequence databases and structural data, could predict whether a particular protein would be suitable for serodiagnosis. Nine of the predictions were validated with recombinant SARS-CoV-2 proteins in the ELISA format using plasma and sera from patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection, and a further 11 predictions were compared to the recent literature. Results appeared to be in agreement with 12 of the predictions, in disagreement with 3, while a further 5 were deemed inconclusive. We showed that two of our top five candidates, the N-terminal fragment of the nucleoprotein and the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein, have the highest sensitivity and specificity and signal-to-noise ratio for detecting COVID-19 sera/plasma by ELISA. Mixing the two antigens together for coating ELISA plates led to a sensitivity of 94% (N = 80 samples from persons with RT-PCR confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection), and a specificity of 97.2% (N = 106 control samples).

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • COVID-19 / diagnosis*
  • COVID-19 / immunology*
  • Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay / methods*
  • Epitopes, B-Lymphocyte / immunology*
  • Humans
  • Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction
  • SARS-CoV-2 / immunology
  • SARS-CoV-2 / pathogenicity*
  • Signal-To-Noise Ratio

Substances

  • Epitopes, B-Lymphocyte