Serological diagnosis of Mycoplasma pneumoniae infection by using the mimic epitopes

Nowadays, there is lack of effective serological detection method for Mycoplasma pneumoniae (M. pneumoniae) infection in clinic. In this study, the mimic epitopes of M. pneumoniae were screened to evaluate the role in the serodiagnosis of M. pneumoniae infection. The M. pneumoniae-positive serum was used as the target for biopanning to phage display random 7-peptide library. The positive phage clones were selected and the DNA were sequenced and analyzed by BLAST. The representative phages were identified using dot immunoblotting and ELISA. The exogenous heptapeptides were synthesized and their reactions with M. pneumonia-positive serum were tested by indirect ELISA. Two heptapeptides, namely heptapeptide 1: TVNFKLY and heptapeptide 2: LPQRLRT, were screened out from the randomly selected 40 phages after the four bio-panning rounds. They had high homologies to some M. pneumoniae antigens. Besides, the representative bacteriophage containing heptapeptide 1 or 2 could react with the M. pneumonia- positive serum. The sensitivities of heptapeptide 1 and heptapeptide 2 for the diagnosis of M. pneumoniae infection were 90.1 and 80.0%, respectively, and the specificities were 94.3 and 97.1%, respectively. Therefore the two heptapeptides were the mimic epitopes of M. pneumoniae and might have potential serological diagnosis value for M. pneumoniae infection.