Enhancing explainable SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development leveraging bee colony optimised Bi-LSTM, Bi-GRU models and bioinformatic analysis

Abstract The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a single-stranded RNA virus that caused the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The COVID-19 outbreak has led to millions of deaths and economic losses globally. Vaccination is the most practical solution,...

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Main Authors: Dilber Uzun Ozsahin, Zubaida Said Ameen, Abdurrahman Shuaibu Hassan, Auwalu Saleh Mubarak
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Portfolio 2024-03-01
Series:Scientific Reports
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-55762-7
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author Dilber Uzun Ozsahin
Zubaida Said Ameen
Abdurrahman Shuaibu Hassan
Auwalu Saleh Mubarak
author_facet Dilber Uzun Ozsahin
Zubaida Said Ameen
Abdurrahman Shuaibu Hassan
Auwalu Saleh Mubarak
author_sort Dilber Uzun Ozsahin
collection DOAJ
description Abstract The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a single-stranded RNA virus that caused the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The COVID-19 outbreak has led to millions of deaths and economic losses globally. Vaccination is the most practical solution, but finding epitopes (antigenic peptide regions) in the SARS-CoV-2 proteome is challenging, costly, and time-consuming. Here, we proposed a deep learning method based on standalone Recurrent Neural networks to predict epitopes from SARS-CoV-2 proteins easily. We optimised the standalone Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (Bi-LSTM) and Bidirectional Gated Recurrent Unit (Bi-GRU) with a bioinspired optimisation algorithm, namely, Bee Colony Optimization (BCO). The study shows that LSTM-based models, particularly BCO-Bi-LSTM, outperform all other models and achieve an accuracy of 0.92 and AUC of 0.944. To overcome the challenge of understanding the model predictions, explainable AI using the Shapely Additive Explanations (SHAP) method was employed to explain how Blackbox models make decisions. Finally, the predicted epitopes led to the development of a multi-epitope vaccine. The multi-epitope vaccine effectiveness evaluation is based on vaccine toxicity, allergic response risk, and antigenic and biochemical characteristics using bioinformatic tools. The developed multi-epitope vaccine is non-toxic and highly antigenic. Codon adaptation, cloning, gel electrophoresis assess genomic sequence, protein composition, expression and purification while docking and IMMSIM servers simulate interactions and immunological response, respectively. These investigations provide a conceptual framework for developing a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.
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spelling doaj.art-0879c567b1da40c293945132c96ba9e82024-03-24T12:16:38ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222024-03-0114111910.1038/s41598-024-55762-7Enhancing explainable SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development leveraging bee colony optimised Bi-LSTM, Bi-GRU models and bioinformatic analysisDilber Uzun Ozsahin0Zubaida Said Ameen1Abdurrahman Shuaibu Hassan2Auwalu Saleh Mubarak3Department of Medical Diagnostic Imaging, College of Health Science, University of SharjahOperational Research Centre in Healthcare, Near East UniversityDepartment of Electrical Electronics and Automation Systems Engineering, Kampala International UniversityOperational Research Centre in Healthcare, Near East UniversityAbstract The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a single-stranded RNA virus that caused the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The COVID-19 outbreak has led to millions of deaths and economic losses globally. Vaccination is the most practical solution, but finding epitopes (antigenic peptide regions) in the SARS-CoV-2 proteome is challenging, costly, and time-consuming. Here, we proposed a deep learning method based on standalone Recurrent Neural networks to predict epitopes from SARS-CoV-2 proteins easily. We optimised the standalone Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (Bi-LSTM) and Bidirectional Gated Recurrent Unit (Bi-GRU) with a bioinspired optimisation algorithm, namely, Bee Colony Optimization (BCO). The study shows that LSTM-based models, particularly BCO-Bi-LSTM, outperform all other models and achieve an accuracy of 0.92 and AUC of 0.944. To overcome the challenge of understanding the model predictions, explainable AI using the Shapely Additive Explanations (SHAP) method was employed to explain how Blackbox models make decisions. Finally, the predicted epitopes led to the development of a multi-epitope vaccine. The multi-epitope vaccine effectiveness evaluation is based on vaccine toxicity, allergic response risk, and antigenic and biochemical characteristics using bioinformatic tools. The developed multi-epitope vaccine is non-toxic and highly antigenic. Codon adaptation, cloning, gel electrophoresis assess genomic sequence, protein composition, expression and purification while docking and IMMSIM servers simulate interactions and immunological response, respectively. These investigations provide a conceptual framework for developing a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-55762-7
spellingShingle Dilber Uzun Ozsahin
Zubaida Said Ameen
Abdurrahman Shuaibu Hassan
Auwalu Saleh Mubarak
Enhancing explainable SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development leveraging bee colony optimised Bi-LSTM, Bi-GRU models and bioinformatic analysis
Scientific Reports
title Enhancing explainable SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development leveraging bee colony optimised Bi-LSTM, Bi-GRU models and bioinformatic analysis
title_full Enhancing explainable SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development leveraging bee colony optimised Bi-LSTM, Bi-GRU models and bioinformatic analysis
title_fullStr Enhancing explainable SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development leveraging bee colony optimised Bi-LSTM, Bi-GRU models and bioinformatic analysis
title_full_unstemmed Enhancing explainable SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development leveraging bee colony optimised Bi-LSTM, Bi-GRU models and bioinformatic analysis
title_short Enhancing explainable SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development leveraging bee colony optimised Bi-LSTM, Bi-GRU models and bioinformatic analysis
title_sort enhancing explainable sars cov 2 vaccine development leveraging bee colony optimised bi lstm bi gru models and bioinformatic analysis
url https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-55762-7
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