American Journal of Microbiological Research, 2018, Vol. 6, No. 4, 124-139 Available online at http://pubs.sciepub.com/ajmr/6/4/2 ©Science and Education Publishing DOI:10.12691/ajmr-6-4-2 Multi Epitope Based Peptide Vaccine against Marek’s Disease Virus Serotype 1 Glycoprotein H and B Sanaa Bashir 1 , Khoubieb Ali Abd-elrahman 2 , Mohammed A. Hassan 3 , Yassir A. Almofti 4,* 1 Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, University of Khartoum, Khartoum, Sudan 2 Department of pharmaceutical technology, College of Pharmacy, University of Medical Science and Technology (MUST) Khartoum, Sudan 3 Department of Bioinformatics, Africa city of Technology, Khartoum, Sudan 4 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Bahri, Khartoum, Sudan *Corresponding author: yamofti99@gmail.com Received July 01, 2018; Revised August 01, 2018; Accepted August 12, 2018 Abstract Background: Marek’s disease (MD) is a highly contagious disease of chickens caused by Marek’s disease virus (MDV). It causes economic losses in poultry industry estimated to be more than 1 billion per year. The aim of this study was to design a peptide vaccine against Marek’s disease virus serotype 1 (MDV-1) by targeting the Glycoproteins H and B as an immunogens to stimulate protective immune response. A total of 43 Glycoprotein H and 33 glycoprotein B of Gallid alphaherpesvirus 2 (MDV-1) were retrieved from the National Center for Biotechnology Information database (NCBI) in the 13th of October 2017. Several tests at Immune Epitope Database (IEDB) were used to detect the highly conserved immunogenic epitopes that elicit B and T cells and could be used as efficient vaccine candidates. In our results three epitopes from glycoprotein H namely; 91- FYKRPVSKLL -100 , 255- LKPYEPVDKF -264 , and 684- PRPL -687 and three epitopes of glycoprotein B; 162- EKQV -165 , 234- YGLSPPE -240 , and 363- YNDSHVK -369 were fulfilled the criteria of surface accessibility, antigenicity for becoming the most probable B cell epitope. While Four epitopes of glycoprotein H; 425- YVLRSAYAF -433 , 175- LTSELTGTY- 183 , 476- LYYAFASIF -484 , and 367- MITETLSTF -375 were addressed as potentially promising epitopes as they bound the highest number of both MHC-I and MHC-II alleles with a high binding affinity to chickens MHC-I molecule (BF2*2101) haplotype in the structural level. Also two epitopes of glycoprotein B; 598- FLFGSGYAL -606 , 727- FMSNPFGAL -735 were bound with the highest number of both MHC-I and MHC-II with high binding affinity. Taken together Marek’s disease is a significant disease of poultry. We addressed epitopes from glycoprotein H and B that could act as candidates’ vaccine. To our knowledge there is no in silico epitope based vaccine for Marek’s disease virus serotype 1 (MDV-1). An in vitro and in vivo application is required to prove the efficacy of the predicted epitopes as peptide vaccine. Keywords: Marek’s disease (MD), Vaccination, Immunoinformatics, Glycoprotein H, Glycoprotein B Cite This Article: Sanaa Bashir, Khoubieb Ali Abd-elrahman, Mohammed A. Hassan and Yassir A. Almofti, “Multi Epitope Based Peptide Vaccine against Marek’s Disease Virus Serotype 1 Glycoprotein H and B.” American Journal of Microbiological Research, vol. 6, no. 4 (2018): 124-139. doi: 10.12691/ajmr-6-4-1. 1. Introduction Marek’s disease (MD) is a highly contagious disease of chickens caused by Marek’s disease virus (MDV) leads to the formation of T-cell tumors in various body tissues and neurological manifestations [1-5]. The disease transmitted by inhalation [6] and classified as a B-list infectious disease in Office International des Epizooties (OIE) with important economic losses in poultry industry estimated at more than 1 billion per year [7,8,9]. The morbidity and mortality rate depending on host genetic susceptibility and virulence of the MDV strain. The Mortality rates were commonly 10% to 30% and on incident could reach 60% to 80% [10,11,12]. Marek’s disease (MD) is widespread in the worldwide. Recently, OIE estimates that about half of the world countries have reported cases of MDV infection such as the United States, the central Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India [13-19], and China is an endemic area with outbreaks reported [20,21]. Marek’s disease virus (MDV) is double-standard DNA that belongs to the Herpesviridae family, subfamily Alphaherpesvirinae in the genus Mardivirus. It has three serotypes different in their virulence in chicken or their susceptibility to induce T-cell lymphomas. These serotypes are Marek’s disease virus serotype 1 (MDV-1) (Gallid herpesvirus 2), serotype 2 (Gallid herpesvirus 3), and serotype 3 (herpesvirus of turkeys) (HVT or MDV3) [22,23]. Among these serotypes, serotype 1 MDVs are oncogenic [24,25,26,27], while other serotypes are non- oncogenic chicken viruses [28,29,30]. MDV-1 genome is 175 to 180 kb, depending on the strain and is predicted to encode 103 glycoproteins [31,32]. Glycoproteins are virion