Microfluidics combined with electron microscopy for rapid and high-throughput mapping of antibody-viral glycoprotein complexes.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the mechanistic interplay between antibodies and invading pathogens is essential for vaccine development. Current methods are labour and time intensive and limited by sample preparation bottlenecks. Here we present microfluidic electron microscopy-based polyclonal epitope mapping (mEM), which combines microfluidics with single-particle electron microscopy for the structural characterization of immune complexes using small volumes of sera (<4 µl). First, we used mEM to map polyclonal antibodies present in sera from infected and vaccinated individuals against five viral glycoproteins using negative-stain electron microscopy. The mEM detected a greater number of epitopes compared with conventional polyclonal epitope structural mapping methods. Second, we used mEM and cryo-electr

SUBMITTER: Sewall LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12404239 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature