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Toxicon. 2012 Dec 1;60(7):1277-86. doi: 10.1016/j.toxicon.2012.08.002. Epub 2012 Aug 14.
Botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs) are listed among the most potent biothreat agents. Simultaneously, two out of seven known serotypes of these toxins are used in medicine and cosmetics. This situation calls for development of detailed epitope maps of these toxins. Such maps will help to develop new ways for decreasing damage caused by these toxins if they were to be used as weapons while retaining the therapeutic effect of these toxins used as medicine. Here, we used a library of random fragments of DNA encoding the catalytic domain of botulinum neurotoxin serotype A to identify short epitope-forming sequences. We demonstrated that knowledge of such sequences in a BoNT of one serotype can be used for identification of epitope-forming sequences in other serotypes of BoNTs. We also demonstrated a serodiagnostic value of identified sequences and their ability to retain epitope-specific structures and trigger production of corresponding antibodies, even when they are transferred into a background of a completely alien carrier protein.
肉毒神经毒素（BoNTs）被列为最有效的生物威胁因子之一。同时，这 7 种已知血清型的毒素中有两种被用于医学和化妆品。这种情况需要对这些毒素进行详细的表位图谱绘制。如果这些毒素被用作武器，这些图谱将有助于开发减少它们造成的损害的新方法，同时保留用作药物的这些毒素的治疗效果。在这里，我们使用了编码肉毒神经毒素血清型 A 催化结构域的随机 DNA 片段文库来识别短的表位形成序列。我们证明，对一种血清型 BoNT 中此类序列的了解可用于鉴定其他 BoNT 血清型的表位形成序列。我们还证明了所鉴定序列的血清学诊断价值及其保留表位特异性结构和触发相应抗体产生的能力，即使它们被转移到完全陌生的载体蛋白背景中也是如此。
