TITLE:
Bioinformatic Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Genomes to Develop a Universal Coronavirus Vaccine
AUTHORS:
Anya Vaish, James McSwiggen
KEYWORDS:
Coronavirus, S-Protein, Spike Protein, Conservation, Universal Vaccine, Bioinformatics
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Biosciences and Medicines,
Vol.10 No.10,
October
14,
2022
ABSTRACT: COVID-19 is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Current RNA vaccines Pfizer/BioNTech’s BNT162b2 and Moderna’s mRNA-1273 are more than 94% successful in preventing infection. The spike protein of the virus is essential for the interaction and internalization of the virus in the host cell and is considered a prime target for vaccine development against the SARS virus. This study aims to identify highly conserved sequences in spike protein or other sections of the viral genome that can potentially be used to develop a universal coronavirus vaccine. Bioinformatic analysis of 258,269 full-length SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences in the NCBI database was carried out using a custom Perl Script. All sequences were compared to the spike protein and full-length viral genome reference to find 100 nucleotide-long segments that were at least 99% conserved across SARS-CoV-2 sequences. The analysis resulted in a >99.5% conserved 114-nucleotide segment on the spike protein and a 99.49% conserved 104-nucleotide segment on the non-spike protein section of the viral genome. The conserved sequences from this study may be useful in developing an RNA or protein vaccine that may be effective against future SARS-CoV-2 strains or could act as a universal vaccine if these sequences are present in other coronavirus families.