Envelope Protein (E)

The envelope E protein is a potential target for the development of vaccines against the Zika virus (ZIKV). An anti-ZIKV vaccine would be especially important because of the probable association of ZIKV infection with microcephaly. Design of an e ective anti-ZIKV vaccine may be facilitated by our understanding of the mutational patterns and evolutionary trajectory of the virus. An extensive report of predicted ZIKV envelope E protein epitopes has recently been reported by Mahfuz et al. Reported here is a bioinformatic analysis of the ZIKV envelope E protein that considers Shannon entropy in addition to B cell epitope prediction. It is proposed that some of  the observed entropic positions may reflect mutational escape of the ZIKV from the immune response of the infected host and that such information, applied together with conventional epitope prediction, can guide and facilitate design of anti-ZIKV vaccines.