Functional mapping of B-cell linear epitopes of SARS-CoV-2 in COVID-19 convalescent population

  1. Zhigang Yi
  2. Yun Ling
  3. Xiaonan Zhang
  4. Jieliang Chen
  5. Kongying Hu
  6. Yuyan Wang
  7. Wuhui song
  8. Tianlei Ying
  9. Rong Zhang
  10. Hongzou Lu
  11. Zhenghong Yuan

Reviewed by

Read the full article See related articles

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

Pandemic SARS-CoV-2 has infected over 10 million people and caused over 500,000 mortalities. Vaccine development is in urgent need to stop the pandemic. Despite great progresses on SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development, the efficacy of the vaccines remains to be determined. Deciphering the interactions of the viral epitopes with their elicited neutralizing antibodies in the convalescent COVID-19 population inspires the vaccine development. In this study, we devised a peptide array composed of 20-mer overlapped peptides of spike (S), membrane (M) and envelope (E) proteins, and performed a screening with 120 COVID-19 convalescent serums and 24 non-COVID-19 serums. We identified five SARS-CoV-2-specific dominant epitopes that reacted with above 40% COVID-19 convalescent serums. Epitopes in the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of S ill reacted with the convalescent serums. Of note, two peptides non-specifically interacted with most of the non-COVID-19 serums. Neutralization assay indicated that only five serums completely blocked viral infection at the dilution of 1:200. By using a peptide-compete neutralizing assay, we found that three dominant epitopes partially competed the neutralization activity of several convalescent serums, suggesting antibodies elicited by these epitopes played an important role in neutralizing viral infection. The epitopes we identified in this study may serve as vaccine candidates to elicit neutralizing antibodies in most vaccinated people or specific antigens for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis.

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.1101/2020.07.25.20161869v2 on medRxiv
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.25.20161869: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Ethics statements: This study was approved by the ethics committee of Shanghai public health clinical center, and the procedures were carried out in accordance with approved guidelines.
    Consent: Informed consent was obtained from the subjects.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Cell Line Authenticationnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Experimental Models: Cell Lines
    SentencesResources
    SARV-CoV-2 virus strain nCoV-SH01 was isolated from a throat swab sample on Vero E6 cells (13), propagated and titrated on Vero E6 cells by a plague assay.
    Vero E6
    suggested: RRID:CVCL_XD71)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.07.25.20161869v1 on medRxiv
  4. Version published to 10.1080/22221751.2020.1815591