Screening of Viral Surface Protein Fragments Library for Vaccine Development

The membrane protein of RNA viruses is one of the key targets for antibody recognization. A high-throughput screening method for identifying antigenic viral membrane protein fragments was developed. The approach involves generating E.coli and yeast cell surface display libraries expressing a pool of fragments (15~150 amino acids) with random distributions throughout the target viral protein, followed by FACS screening against mAb, plAb or patient sera[1,2,3,4]. The membrane protein HA (hemagglutinin) of the A/H1N1 influenza virus was chosen as a model protein. After one round of FACS screening against mouse anti-HA plAb, an interesting peptide region (432~483 amino acids) was obtained with high frequencies after analyzing the sequences of the positive fragments. The antigenic and immunogenic activity of these fragments were subsequently characterized. The method described here aims for the comprehensive analysis of antibody responses to virus attack, and thus providing information on the conserved neutralizing epitopes, which is important for the design of vaccines and therapeutics.

Keywords: vaccine development, fragment library, cell surface display, virus membrane protein, HA, H1N1

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