Title

Antigen-Antibody docking reveals the molecular basis for cross-reactivity of the 1918 and 2009 Influenza A/H1N1 pandemic viruses 

Authors

Sarah Cherian, Pratip Shil, Akhilesh Chandra Mishra* 

Affiliation

Bioinformatics and Data management Division, National Institute of Virology, 20 A, Dr. Ambedkar Road, Pune - 411001,India 

Email

acm1750@rediffmail.com; *Corresponding author

Phone

+91 20 26124386

Fax

+91 20 26122669

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

Received December 16, 2010; Accepted January 06, 2011; Published March 02, 2011

To understand the reported cross-reactivity of the 2009 H1N1 and the 1918 H1N1 pandemic viruses we docked the crystal structure of 2D1, an antibody derived from a survivor of the 1918 pandemic, to the structures of hemaglutinin (HA) of the 2009 strain and seasonal H1 vaccine strains. Our studies revealed that 2D1 binds to the 2009 HA at antigenic site ‘Sa’, with stabilizing contacts, similar to that in an available co-crystal structure of 2D1-1918 HA. However, 2D1 failed to bind to the known antigenic sites in the HAs of seasonal strains. Our study thus reveals the molecular basis for pre-existing immunity in elderly people to the 2009 pandemic virus.  

Keywords

pandemic Influenza, 2009 H1N1, 1918 H1N1, hemagglutinin, antibody, antigenic site, docking, pre-existing immunity 

Citation

Cherian et al. Bioinformation 6(1): 35-38 (2011)

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.