Proteomic approaches to antigen discovery

Proteomics has been widely applied to develop two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis maps and databases, evaluate gene expression profiles under different environmental conditions, assess global changes associated with specific mutations, and define drug targets of bacterial pathogens. When coupled to immunological assays, proteomics may also be used to identify B-cell and T-cell antigens within complex protein mixtures. This chapter describes the proteomic approaches developed by our laboratories to accelerate the antigen discovery program for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. As presented or with minor modifications, these techniques may be universally applied to other bacterial pathogens or used to identify bacterial proteins possessing other immunological properties.