VirScan: High-throughput Profiling of Antiviral Antibody Epitopes

Ellen L Shrock; Christine L Shrock; Stephen J Elledge

doi:10.21769/BioProtoc.4464

VirScan: High-throughput Profiling of Antiviral Antibody Epitopes

Bio Protoc. 2022 Jul 5;12(13):e4464. doi: 10.21769/BioProtoc.4464.

Authors

Ellen L Shrock^{1

2}, Christine L Shrock³, Stephen J Elledge^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
² Division of Genetics, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
³ Department of Neurology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

Abstract

Profiling the specificities of antibodies can reveal a wealth of information about humoral immune responses and the antigens they target. Here, we present a protocol for VirScan, an application of the phage immunoprecipitation sequencing (PhIP-Seq) method for profiling the specificities of human antiviral antibodies. Accompanying this protocol is a video of the experimental procedure. VirScan and, more generally, PhIP-Seq are techniques that enable high-throughput antibody profiling by combining high-throughput DNA oligo synthesis and bacteriophage display with next-generation sequencing. In the VirScan method, human sera samples are screened against a library of peptides spanning the entire human viral proteome. Bound phage are immunoprecipitated and sequenced, identifying the viral peptides recognized by the antibodies. VirScan Is a powerful tool for uncovering individual viral exposure histories, mapping the epitope landscape of viruses of interest, and studying fundamental mechanisms of viral immunity. Graphical abstract.

Keywords: Antibody; Bacteriophage display; Epitope; High-throughput screening; Immunology; PhIP-Seq; Serology; Synthetic biology; VirScan; Virus.