Large-scale screening of human sera with cytomegalovirus recombinant antigens

One of the major problems regarding cytomegalovirus (CMV) serodiagnosis is the use of poorly defined viral antigens. Individual CMV proteins expressed via recombinant DNA procedures are a promising approach to solving this problem. In this work, 10 different fusion proteins containing antigenic epitopes of the major CMV structural proteins of 150, 71, 65, 38, and 28 kilodaltons and of the nonstructural protein of 52 kilodaltons were subjected to Western (immuno-) blotting to assay their reactivities with immunoglobulins G and M in 395 CMV-seropositive and 100 CMV-seronegative unselected human serum samples. As a whole, the results obtained indicate that CMV can be replaced by recombinant viral proteins in the serological evaluation of anti-CMV antibodies.