2.6. Frequency analysis of the neutralizing mAb epitope residues
Frequency of 74 experimentally validated mAb epitope residues occurring in SARS-CoV-2 spike protein was computed using python script. Briefly, the excel file with the details of epitope residues was processed using the pandas library [15]. Frequency of independent epitope residues was calculated and normalized by the total number of antibodies (n=74) and converted into percentage. The percentage frequency for those epitope residues that have been observed to be mutated in the SARS-CoV-2 spike variants of concern was plotted as a bar plot using the pyplot module in the python graphical plotting library Matplotlib [14]. To generate the colorbar for frequency, percentage frequency values were normalized by the maximum value among the computed frequency and ‘jet’ colormap was used to plot the colorbar using Scalar Mappable class.