Recombinant DNA technical methods have permitted fusions of genes in a simple way. The fusion of
cpa and
csa genes and its cloning in
E. coli TOP10 has been reported (unpublished). In our work, in silico analysis of a chimeric fusion protein against
C. perfringens type A and
C. septicum alpha toxins is described. According to the newest findings, this is the 1st time that alpha-alpha fusion gene is designed for producing alpha-alpha fusion protein. It could be as a proper candidate for recombinant vaccine development. In our search, the complete
cpa sequence containing its signal peptide for the proper secretion of the fusion protein and the
csa sequence lacking signal peptide were used. A linker fragment “A(EAAAK)2A” was designed to link both genes (Langroudi et al.
2011). The InterPro program using several databases such as PRINTS, PROSITE, PFam-A, TIGRFAM, PROFILES, and PRODOM shows that the fusion protein consists of
C. perfringens alpha toxin/phospholipase C/P1 nuclease domain superfamily and PLAT/LH2 domain superfamily, the family member which is combined with
C. septicum alpha toxin/Aerolisin/ETX pore-forming (Jones et al.
2014). In 1989, Titball et al. showed that the nucleotide sequences of the
cpa gene are 1197 bp in length (at base 1327–2523) and signal peptide sequences of the
cpa gene are 84 bp in length (at base 1327–1410) and about 28 aa of that Trp may be the first amino acid of the mature activated toxin (Titball et al.
1989). In another search
csa gene of
C. septicum, BX96 was cloned and expressed in
E. coli. The nucleotide sequences of the
csa gene are 1332 bp in length (at base 561–1892) and signal peptide sequences of the
csa gene are 93 bp in length (at base 561–653) about 31 aa (Ballard et al.
1995). The nucleotide sequences of the fusion protein displayed that the signal peptide site is located at amino acid number 1 to 28 (Fig.
4). For verification of this finding, the secondary structure and signal peptide of the fusion protein were predicted by proMotif of proFunc server (Laskowski et al.
2005a,
b) and signalP (Petersen et al.
2011) online program, respectively. The data displayed similar features of each of the
C. perfringens and
C. septicun alpha toxin fragments comprising of alpha-alpha fusion protein constructions. The finding, which is shown in Fig.
6, verifies that the first residue of the fusion protein is amino acid Trp number 29. Based on the newest finding, for the 1st time, the designed fusion gene was constructed and cloned into pUC57 vector and then transformed into cloning host cell (
E. coli TOP10) (unpublished). The deposited accession number for the sequence of the fusion gene in the GenBank is MK908396, and also, in GenBank protein ID QDK65251.1, there is translation of the fusion gene that would produce a 777 amino acid alpha-alpha fusion protein (Fig.
6). At the 5′ end of
cpa and the 3′ end of
csa were added
NdeI and
XhoI restriction sites and their flanking regions respectively, which are necessary for insertion of the fusion gene into pET22b (+) expression vector; they are in the synthetic construct alpha-alpha fusion gene. The InterPro results were verified by the findings of tertiary structure prediction of the fusion gene by I-TASSER server. Findings revealed that the fusion protein consists of two main domains linked together with a linker fragment. The secondary structure prediction results were verified by tertiary structure prediction findings of
cpa complete alpha toxin,
csa-activated alpha toxin, and five models of fusion proteins. The results displayed that the secondary structure characteristics of both toxins are present in model 1 of tertiary structure of fusion protein with the best C-score = − 2.68, TM-score = 0.41 ± 0.14 and RMSD = 15.1 ± 3.5 (Fig.
6). Different parts of the tertiary structure of the synthetic construct fusion protein were predicted by I-TASSER and are shown in (Fig.
6). The linker fragment between two domains of the fusion protein can provide proper flexibility and separation, and the fusion protein after expression can provide proper collection in the periplasmic space of suitable host cell, because a signal peptide is present at the N-terminal of fusion protein, which will permit it to cross the cytoplasmic membrane. Thus, the fusion protein will be secret to the culture media and inclusion body formation would not occur (Langroudi et al.
2012). I-TASSER server predicted models of protein by combining the methods of threading, structural refinement, and ab initio modeling (Roy et al.
2010; Zhang
2008; Zhang
2009). The final model in the procedure is created as PDB format. The model to the proFunc server upload and the server uses sequence and structure-based methods to determine the likely function of a protein from its 3D structure (Laskowski et al.
2005a,
b).