Further improvement of broad specificity hapten recognition with protein engineering

Protein Eng. 2003 Jan;16(1):37-46. doi: 10.1093/proeng/gzg010.

Abstract

Sulfa-antibiotics (sulfonamides) are widely used in veterinary medicine. Meat and milk from treated animals can be contaminated with sulfa residues. Current sulfonamide assays are unfit for screening of food, because they are either too laborious, insensitive or specific for a few sulfa compounds only. An immunoassay for detection of all sulfas in a single reaction would be useful for screening. Previously we have improved the broad specificity sulfa binding of antibody 27G3 with random mutagenesis and phage display. In order to improve the properties of this antibody further, mutants from the previous study were recombined and more mutations introduced. These new libraries were enriched with phage display and several different mutant antibodies were isolated. The cross-reaction profile of the best mutant was better than that of the wild-type antibody and the mutants of the previous study: it was capable of binding 10 of the tested 13 sulfonamides within a narrow concentration range and also bound the rest of the sulfas 5- to 11-fold better than the mutants of the previous study.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Antibody Specificity
  • Bacteriophage M13 / chemistry
  • Bacteriophage M13 / genetics
  • Binding, Competitive
  • Cloning, Molecular
  • DNA Shuffling
  • Escherichia coli / metabolism
  • Haptens / chemistry
  • Haptens / genetics*
  • Haptens / metabolism*
  • Immunoassay
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Mutagenesis, Site-Directed
  • Peptide Library
  • Plasmids / genetics
  • Polymerase Chain Reaction / methods
  • Sulfonamides / analysis*
  • Sulfonamides / chemistry
  • Sulfonamides / metabolism
  • Viral Fusion Proteins / chemistry
  • Viral Fusion Proteins / genetics
  • Viral Fusion Proteins / metabolism

Substances

  • Haptens
  • Peptide Library
  • Sulfonamides
  • Viral Fusion Proteins