Title

Bioinformatics in molecular immunology laboratories demonstrated: Modeling an anti-CMV scFv antibody

Authors

Chua Kek Heng^1* and Rofina Yasmin Othman²

Affiliation

¹Department of Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Malaysia; ²Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of science, University of Malaya, Malaysia

E-mail*

khchua@um.edu.my; * Corresponding author

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

received February 4, 2006; accepted March 20, 2006; published online March 27, 2006

A scFv (single chain variable fragment) antibody clone from anti-CMV (anti-cucumber mosaic virus) was successfully constructed from immunized mouse and the DNA sequence was submitted to GenBank (AY337618 and AY337619). The expression of a 32 kDa recombinant antibody in bacteria was verified using ELISA (enzyme-linked immunoassay) and western blot. However, elucidation of specific anti-CMV scFv function requires detailed and time consuming immuno-assays. Alternatively, useful functional information on anti-CMV scFV antibody can be obtained using available Bioinformatics tools and techniques without performing tedious assays. Here, we use the commonly used Bioinformatics tools and databases such as BLAST (basic local alignment search tool), GenBank, PDB (protein databank), KABAT numbering, SWISS-MODEL and Insight II to gain specific functional insights into anti-CMV scFv.

Keywords

anti-CMV scFv; sequencing; GenBank; homology modeling; CDR; epitopes

Citation

Chua & Othman, Bioinformation 1(4): 118-120 (2006)

Edited by

Y. Z. Chen

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.