Engineering of papaya mosaic virus (PapMV) nanoparticles through fusion of the HA11 peptide to several putative surface-exposed sites.

ABSTRACT: Papaya mosaic virus has been shown to be an efficient adjuvant and vaccine platform in the design and improvement of innovative flu vaccines. So far, all fusions based on the PapMV platform have been located at the C-terminus of the PapMV coat protein. Considering that some epitopes might interfere with the self-assembly of PapMV CP when fused at the C-terminus, we evaluated other possible sites of fusion using the influenza HA11 peptide antigen. Two out of the six new fusion sites tested led to the production of recombinant proteins capable of self assembly into PapMV nanoparticles; the two functional sites are located after amino acids 12 and 187. Immunoprecipitation of each of the successful fusions demonstrated that the HA11 epitope was located at the surface of the nanoparticles. The

SUBMITTER: Rioux G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3283703 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature