Selection, synthesis and application of hepatitis E virus peptides

Accordingto our computer analysis of hydrophobicity and prediction of secondary structuresfor the full-length putative proteins encoded by ORF 1(open reading frame-1),ORF2 and ORF3ofhepatitis E virus(HEV),we selected amino acid regions with tiydrophilicity,β-turn,and β-sheet,and synthesized seven peptities of possible epitope-containing regions of the polypeptide en-coded by all three ORFs of HEV genomic RNA by Merrifield s method of solid-phase,The syn-thetic peptides were screened and identified by solli-phase enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA).Three of the peptides(EH174 from ORF1,EH286 from ORF2 and EH362 from ORF3)showed antigenic activity and possible application for the development of anti-HEV test k its(thepeptide-based EL ISA).The laboratory experunents and clinical trials indicated that the kits,us-ing a set of three synthetic HEV pepties as coating antigens,were of high specificity and exhibit-ed good reproducibility,Additionally,our results also demonstrated good agreement with clinical find i