Epitope mapping of potential novel immunogenic proteins of Campylobacter jejuni NCTC 11168

A number of seven proteins were selected during immunoscreening and further analyses. The proteins were in silico divided into overlapping 15-mer oligopeptides with an overlap of 11 residues. The microarrays were incubated with different antibodies to C. jejuni, Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica. Each microarray was separated into three individual incubation chambers using ProPlate 3-Well modules. Within each incubation chamber, each peptide was spotted in triplicate with the controls spotted nine times each. The controls included human-IgG, rabbit-IgG, mouse-IgG and myelin basal protein (MBP). Each chamber was incubated independently using different polyclonal antibodies to C. jejuni, and for specificity testing, with an antibody to E. coli or S. enterica. Thus, samples 4_1, 4_2, 5_1 and 5_2 represent epitope mapping of three proteins with C. jejuni antibodies, while 6_1, 6_2, 7_1 and 7_2 represent the data after incubation with an E. coli antibody investigating unspecific interactions of the antibody to the potential linear epitopes from C. jejuni. Finally, for four different proteins from C. jejuni, the set two indicated by S2 was performed. Here, S2_6_1, S2_7_1, S2_7_2, S2_8_1 and S2_8_2 indicate epitope mapping after incubation with antibodies to C. jejuni, while the remaining samples were performed to test these latter 4 proteins for specificity by incubation with antibody to S. enterica.