Title

Naturally occurring capsid protein variants L1 of human papillomavirus genotype 16 in Morocco

Authors

Aissam El-Aliani^{1, 2}, My Abdelaziz El Alaoui³, Imane Chaoui¹, My Mustapha Ennaji², Mohammed
Attaleb¹, Mohammed El Mzibri^1*

Affiliation

¹Unit of Biology and Medical Research, National Centre Natuional de l'Energie, des Sciences et des techniques Nucleaires. Morocco;
²Laboratory of Virology Microbiology, Quality, Biotechnologies/Eco-Toxicology and Biodiversity (LVMQB/ETB), Faculte des Sciences et Techniques Mohammedia, Morocco;

3National Center for Scientific and Technical Research CNRST, Morocco;

E-mail

mzibri@yahoo.com; elmzibri@cnesten.org.ma;

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

Received June 8, 2017; Revised July 5, 2017; Accepted July 7, 2017; Published August 31, 2017

HPV L1 protein is a corner stone in HPV structure, it's involved in the formation of the viral capsid; widely used as a systematic material and considered as the main component in vaccines development and production. The present study aims to characterize genetic variation of L1 gene of HPV 16 specimens and to evaluate in silico the impact of major variants on the epitope change affecting its conformational structure. A fragment of L1 gene from 35 HPV 16 confirmed specimens were amplified by PCR and sequenced. Overall, five amino acids residues changes were reported: T390P in 16 specimens, M425I and M431I in 2 cases, insertion of Serine at 460 and aspartic acid deletion at position 477 in all analyzed cases. The 3D generated model showed that T389P amino acid substitution is located in the H-I loop; the two substitutions M424I and M430I are both located in the H2 helice. The Serine insertion and aspartic acid deletion are located in the H4 helice and B-C loop, respectively. Superimposition of sequences structures showed that they share a very similar conformation highlighting that the reported amino acids variations don't affect the structure of the L1 protein. However T389P, located in the H-I loop identified as an immunogenetic region of L1 capsid, was reported in 51.4% of cases could interact with vaccines induced monoclonal antibodies suggesting a potential impact on the efficacy of available anti-HPV vaccines.

Keywords:

HPV 16, L1 protein, genetic variation, in silico prediction, vaccine

Citation

El-Aliani et al. Bioinformation 13(8): 241- 248 (2017)

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.