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Updated: Apr 11, 2026
Phage Phenomics: Physiological Approaches to Characterize Novel Viral Proteins
Published on: June 11, 2015
Viral immunology. Comprehensive serological profiling of human populations using a synthetic human virome
George J Xu1, Tomasz Kula2, Qikai Xu3
1Program in Biophysics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02115, USA. Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Division of Genetics, Department of Medicine, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Department of Genetics, Harvard University Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Abstract:
The human virome plays important roles in health and immunity. However, current methods for detecting viral infections and antiviral responses have limited throughput and coverage. Here, we present VirScan, a high-throughput method to comprehensively analyze antiviral antibodies using immunoprecipitation and massively parallel DNA sequencing of a bacteriophage library displaying proteome-wide peptides from all human viruses. We assayed over 10(8) antibody-peptide interactions in 569 humans across four continents, nearly doubling the number of previously established viral epitopes. We detected antibodies to an average of 10 viral species per person and 84 species in at least two individuals. Although rates of specific virus exposure were heterogeneous across populations, antibody responses targeted strongly conserved "public epitopes" for each virus, suggesting that they may elicit highly similar antibodies. VirScan is a powerful approach for studying interactions between the virome and the immune system.
