epitope identification in befv gene for detecting effective points

Background objective: the most common cause of milk production loss in cattle and water buffalo is bovine ephemeral fever (bef). previous cases have been reported in iran #39;s south regions, with a low mortality rate. as a result, studying befv and identifying ideal epitopes for further developing diagnostic paths is important.materials methods: to investigate befv n protein epitopes, we collected samples, extracted and sequenced dna, and then used the expasy translate method to deduce the amino acid sequence. various immunoinformatics techniques were used to analyze physical/chemical properties, secondary structure of protein sequences, membrane topology, antigenic property, and 3d structure. bcpred and the discotope server, respectively, predicted linear and discontinuous epitopes of befv n protein. finally, the patchdock server was used to dock peptides and antibodies.result: three linear epitopes and sixteen discontinuous epitopic positions were discovered. furthermore, molecular docking between epitopes and low-bindin-genergy antibodies revealed that they have easy access to the immune system.conclusion: in this study, bioinformatics techniques were used to predict epitopes of the befv n protein for further developing befv diagnostic paths. furthermore, experimental validation is needed for these epitopes.