The Legionellaceae group comprises the Legionella, containing 58 species with 70 serotypes. For instance, Legionella pneumophila is the deadliest serotype to cause Legionnaires infectious and is responsible for 90% of the
infections in humans. The bacterial pathogen is associated with a severe lung
infection, known as legionaries' disease. It is resistant to multiple drugs, thus warranting novel
vaccine candidates identification to immune the host against
infections caused by the said pathogen. For this, we applied the subtractive proteomics and reverse vaccinology approaches to annotate the most essential genes suitable for
vaccine designing. From the whole
proteome, only five
proteins (Q5ZVG4, Q5ZRZ1, Q5ZWE6, Q5ZT09, and Q5ZUZ8) as the best targets for further processing as they fulfill all the standard parameters set for in silico
vaccine design. Immuno-informatics approaches were further applied to the selected
protein sequences to prioritized antigenic
epitopes for design a multi-
epitope subunit vaccine. A multi-
epitopes vaccine was designed by using suitable linkers to link the CTL (cytotoxic T lymphocytes), HTL (Helper T lymphocytes),
B cell epitopes, and adjuvant to strengthen the
vaccine's immunogenicity. The MEVC(multi-
epitopes vaccine construct) was reported to interact with human immune receptor TLR-2 (
toll-like receptor) robustly (docking score = -357.18 kcal/mol), and a higher expression was achieved in the Escherichia coli system (CAI = 0.88, and GC contents = 54.34%). Moreover, immune simulation revealed that on the 3rd day, the neutralization of the
antigen started, while on the 5th day, the
antigen was completely neutralized by the secreted
immune factors. In conclusion, the designed
vaccine candidate effectively triggered the immune response against eh pathogen; however, wet lab-based experimentations are highly recommended to prove the protective immunological proficiency of the
vaccine against L. pneumophila.