Monoclonal antibodies to surface antigens of a pathogenic Mycoplasma hominis strain

Three monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) were prepared against an arthritogenic strain of Mycoplasma hominis isolated from the joint aspirates of a patient with chronic septic arthritis. Immunoblots of polyacrylamide gel-electrophoresed proteins before and after surface proteolysis showed that the predominant antigenic determinants were on surface-exposed polypeptides. These polypeptides have extensive hydrophobic characteristics, as demonstrated by Triton X-114 phase partitioning. The electrophoresed proteins from cells grown in medium containing [14C]palmitate were blotted onto nitrocellulose which was both reacted with the MAbs and exposed to X-ray film. Superimposable bands on both the immunoblots and the exposed film suggested that the proteins might be acylated. The MAbs were further tested for reactivity with 16 other strains of M. hominis isolated from patients with septic arthritis (1 strain), septicemia (10 strains), or nongonococcal urethritis (1 strain); from the cervix (1 strain), rectum (1 strain), or surgical wound (1 strain) of patients; and from a contaminated cell culture. No single protein was consistently recognized from strain to strain, although a 94-kDa protein from 16 of the 17 strains tested was bound by at least one of the MAbs. The apparent antigenic heterogeneity among strains of M. hominis, including those isolated from the same tissue source and/or from patients with the same type of clinical disease, might be misleading in that all strains express epitopes associated with a discrete number of proteins to which one, two, or all three MAbs bind. The expression of the epitopes on multiple proteins from the same or different strains may reflect a mechanism for generating antigenic diversity.