The Nucleocapsid protein triggers the main humoral immune response in COVID-19 patients
Smits, Veronique A. J.; Hernandez-Carralero, Esperanza; Paz-Cabrera, Maria Cristina; Cabrera, Elisa; Hernandez-Reyes, Yeray; Hernandez-Fernaud, Juan Ramon; Gillespie, David A.; Salido, Eduardo; Hernandez-Porto, Miriam; Freire, Raimundo
BIOCHEMICAL AND BIOPHYSICAL RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS
2021
VL / 543 - BP / 45 - EP / 49
abstract
In order to control the COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection, serious progress has been made to identify infected patients and to detect patients with a positive immune response against the virus. Currently, attempts to generate a vaccine against the coronavirus are ongoing. To understand SARSCoV-2 immunoreactivity, we compared the IgG antibody response against SARS-CoV-2 in infected versus control patients by dot blot using recombinant viral particle proteins: N (Nucleocapsid), M (Membrane) and S (Spike). In addition, we used different protein fragments of the N and S protein to map immune epitopes. Most of the COVID-19 patients presented a specific immune response against the full length and fragments of the N protein and, to lesser extent, against a fragment containing amino acids 300-685 of the S protein. In contrast, immunoreactivity against other S protein fragments or the M protein was low. This response is specific for COVID-19 patients as very few of the control patients displayed immunoreactivity, likely reflecting an immune response against other coronaviruses. Altogether, our results may help develop method(s) for measuring COVID-19 antibody response, selectivity of methods detecting such SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and vaccine development. (c) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
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