Pathogen-specific deep sequence-coupled biopanning: A method for surveying human antibody responses.

Area of Science:

• Immunology
• Virology
• Biotechnology

Background:

• Identifying antibody targets is crucial for vaccine design, diagnostics, and understanding disease.
• Current methods may not fully capture the breadth of antibody responses in polyclonal human serum.

Purpose of the Study:

• To adapt a deep sequence-coupled biopanning approach for identifying pathogen-specific epitopes recognized by antibodies during acute infection.
• To demonstrate the utility of this method by applying it to Dengue virus (DENV) infection.

Main Methods:

• Developed and applied a deep sequence-coupled biopanning technique using bacteriophage MS2 virus-like particles displaying DENV antigen fragments.
• Analyzed affinity-selected peptide epitopes from sera of patients with acute secondary DENV infection via deep sequence analysis.

Main Results:

• Identified several commonly enriched epitopes within the DENV Envelope glycoprotein and Non-Structural Protein 1.
• Observed significant individual variation in antibody responses, highlighting personalized epitope recognition.

Conclusions:

• Established a novel, powerful approach for characterizing pathogen-specific antibody responses in human sera.
• The method has significant potential for identifying new diagnostic markers and vaccine targets for infectious diseases.