Identifying antigenic region of hepatitis B surface antigen by patient's serum with random peptide library

Abstract

By screening with random peptide library against human anti-HBsAg antibody, a dominant antibody-binding region was noted. Through peptide synthesis and binding tests, a peptide, corresponding to residues 107-126 and coinciding with a predicted loop region, has been proved to exhibit strong binding capability and the binding could be competitively inhibited by HBsAg. Subsequently, the contributions of each amino acid, sited on this segment were further investigated by alanine scanning.