Methods of epitope mapping |
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Authors: | I Pettersson |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Medical Cell Genetics, Medical Nobel Institutet, Karolinska Institutet, Box 60 400, S-104 01 Stockholm, Sweden |
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Abstract: | Concluding remarks It is important to remember that the merits of the different approaches to epitope mapping should be judged against the purpose of the study. A peptide specifically recognized by nearly all sera containing a certain autoimmune specificity 20, 21, 26], would most likely be selected for the detection of the anti-linear/continuous epitope fraction among those autoantibodies and could be highly useful for diagnostic purposes. This is true even if a majority of the antibodies were directed against conformational/discontinuous protein epitopes. If the purpose is to study the induction or maintenance of the autoimmune response, one would also have to look at and account for the conformation-dependent autoantibodies. There is also the possibility that some pathogenic autoantibodies could constitute a small fraction requiring the complete nucleic acid-protein complex as an antigen. In that case, the pathogenic epitope would not be identified nor mapped using the techniques discussed in this review. |
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Keywords: | autoantibody autoantigen B-cell epitope |
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