| Abstrakt: |
A panel of monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) to human inducible nitric oxide synthase (hiNOS) has been developed. By isotype analysis of the MAbs cloned from the 24 different positive hybridomas, 13 were determined to be mouse IgG1, two were mouse IgG2a, two were mouse IgG2b, and the seven others were mouse IgM antibodies: all contained kappa light chains. The anti-hiNOS MAbs were initially characterized by ELISA, RIA, Western blot, and immunocytochemistry, and then they were epitope mapped using synthetic peptides and a three-step mapping procedure. In the first step, each of the 24 MAbs was tested by indirect ELISA for binding to 96 overlapping 18-amino acid-long peptides that span the entire 1153-amino acid length of hiNOS. Eight IgG class anti-hiNOS MAbs were found to bind to one of five different peptides. In the second step, a series of amino terminal and carboxyl terminal truncated peptides were synthesized for each of the five peptides to which one or more of the MAbs bound. Each of the eight anti-hiNOS MAbs was found to bind to the truncated peptides with a unique specificity that identified the amino acid segment involved in binding. The third step in the epitope mapping process utilized three series of overlapping 5-, 6-, 7-, 8-, and 9-amino acid-long peptides for each of these segments and identified the exact amino acids of hiNOS involved in antibody binding. Anti-hiNOS MAbs 2A1-F8, 2D2-B2, 21C10-1D10, and 24B10-2C7 were found to be especially useful in different immunoassays. |
