Potential Epitopes and Mutation Characteristics of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Spike Protein/ 2019新型冠状病毒刺突蛋白表位预测及变异分析

Objective: To predict the epitopes of the spike protein of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) and to analyze the mutation characteristics of this protein Methods: The gene of 2019-nCoV was downloaded from GenBank and global initiative on sharing all influenza data database (as of March 4, 2020) ClustalW, MEGA 7 0, Immune Epitope Database and other software were used for predicting potential B cell and T cell epitopes of spike protein, and then mutations were compared in epitope and non-epitope regions Statistical analysis was performed with chi-square test Results: There were 130 potential epitopes, including 25 linear B-cell epitopes, 18 non-linear B-cell epitopes, 71 HLA class-Ⅰrestricted T-cell epitopes, and 16 HLA class-Ⅱ restricted T-cell epitopes in spike protein S404~426 displayed the higher antigenicity-score, and its population coverage was 73 4% in China Compared with the spike protein before January 31, the mutation frequencies of spike protein were increased both in non-epitope (15 38% vs 21 74%) and epitope regions (6 15% vs 8 70%) than those after January 31, but the differences were not statistically significant (both P>0 05) Conclusions: The study identifies several epitopes of 2019-nCoV spike protein, which provides a preliminary basis for the study of 2019-nCoV vaccine Mutations in spike protein have an increasing trend which needs more attention and research in the future