Introduction

As the most pathogenic virus for marine mammals, Cetacean morbillivirus (CeMV) has caused lethal disease outbreaks worldwide over the last 30 years. A severe threat is posed to isolated populations like those of the Mediterranean basin, where Dolphin morbillivirus (DMV) strain was spreading across several species,including the ndangered sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus).
DMV infects immune and polarized epithelial cells through attachment of its haemagglutinin (H) to signaling lymphocyte activation molecule (SLAM) and nectin-4, respectively. So far unsolved, H protein is an attractive and promising antiviral target. We describe homology-modeled DMV H complexed to sperm whale SLAM and nectin-4 putative receptors, and use this scaffold to predict B-cell epitopes as candidates for therapeutics and diagnostics developments.

Discussion and conclusions

In the absence of a solved structure, screening of antigenic determinants is the most challenging step in immunodiagnostics pipelines.
Given the high costs and technical difficulties of experimental methods, reliable bioinformatics approaches that reduce efforts and prioritize design are urgently needed. The workflow here shown relies on multiple predictions, consensus filtering and visual mapping on a confident homology-modeled 3D structure, thereby achieving rapid and cost-effective identification of B-cell epitopes as candidates for antibody-based diagnostics.

Acknowledgments

This paper has been carried out thanks to the contributions of the Centro di Educazione Ambientale e alla Sostenibilità Laguna di Nora and its Chairman Giuseppe Ollano. The authors thank all those who collaborated in the collection of data, including local fishermen, researchers and SLED project volunteers.