Antibody epitope mapping using SPOT peptide arrays.

Information at the amino acid level about the epitopes of proteins recognized by antibodies or antibody fragments is important for their use as biological and diagnostic tools, therapeutic molecules, and for understanding molecular recognition events in general. The use of chemically prepared arrays of short peptides has emerged as a powerful tool to identify and characterize antibody epitopes. In this chapter the SPOT synthesis technique is described in detail. In addition, three different types of peptide libraries and their applications are described: protein sequence-derived scans of overlapping peptides (peptide scans) used to locate epitopes within the protein sequence, truncation libraries used to identify the minimal peptide length required for antibody binding, and complete substitutional analyses to identify the key residues important for antibody binding.