A simpler and more cost-effective peptide biosynthetic method using the truncated GST as carrier for epitope mapping

There is a need to develop better methods for epitope mapping and/or identification of antibody-recognizing motifs. Here, we describe improved biosynthetic peptide (BSP) method using a newly developed plasmid pXXGST-3 as vector, which has a viral E7 gene in the cloning sites of pXXGST-1. It is crucial to employ pXXGST-3 instead of pXXGST-1, since it makes use of the BSP method simpler and easier to perform, and more cost-effective for epitope mapping. These merits are embodied in two aspects: i) convenient recovery of double enzyme-digested product due to the existence of 315 bp inserted between BamH I and Sal I sites, and thus greatly reducing the production of self-ligation clones, and ii) no longer requiring control protein when screening recombinant (r-) clones expressing 8/18mer peptides by running polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The protocol involves the following core steps: (i) design of plus and minus strands of DNA fragments encoding overlapping 8/18mer peptides; (ii) chemical synthesis of the designed DNA fragments; (iii) development of r-clones using pXXGST-3 vector expressing each 8/18mer peptide fused with truncated GST188 protein; (iv) screening r-clones by running the cell pellets from each induced clone on SDS-PAGE gel followed by sequencing of inserted DNA fragments for each verified r-clone; and (v) Western blotting with either monoclonal antibodies or polyclonal antibodies. This improved GST188-BSP method provides a powerful alternative tool for epitope mapping.