The Vaccine R&D Center Protein Microarray core, under Dr. Philip Felgner`s leadership, has developed a platform for high throughput screening, on a proteome-wide scale, for the discovery of novel antigens for serum surveillance, diagnosis, and vaccines. Dedicated to expanding its application, the Protein Microarray core has built an unmatched library of over 60 thousand ORFs from over 40 microorganisms (gene inventory), ranging from viruses to human.
Our group employs a simple, but cutting edge, technology to express virtually any antigen necessary for the diverse applications of protein microarrays such as serum surveillance, diagnostics, vaccine research and development, antigen discovery and much more.
This is how we come from genome to proteome in a fast large-scale approach.
Starting from genomic DNA, cloned plasmids, synthetic genes or even RNA, we combine the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with a homologous recombination method to clone hundreds of DNA sequences at a time. All in an expression ready vector for prompt expression reactions.
After cloning and various rigorous quality control steps, each protein is then expressed in a cell-free system (in vitro transcription translation system) individually. This allows for an active mapping for individual antigens, as well as customization.
After expression, in a cell-free system, The reactions are loaded onto an automated printer and then printed onto the microarray chips. The slides can be configured for being used to probe 3, 4, 8, 16 or 64 each, adding another level of scaling that allow the probing of potentially thousands of specimens on a single print run!
After quality control of the printed chips, they are ready to be probed using serum, plasma or even monoclonal antibody samples! Our team is ready to perform this step on most of the needed scenarios! The amount of sample needed can be as little as 2 ul of sera, so rare and precious specimens can be used comfortably!
The protein microarray is an unmatched technology for high throughput analysis of proteome-wide analysis. This means that its scalability allows the analysis of multiple samples and many scenarios! Please feel free to explore more for antigen discovery and vaccine research!