Patent ID: 7319012

Claim:
A method of screening a library of target organism polypeptides in order to identify a target organism antigen that is capable of eliciting a humoral immune response, comprising: (a) providing a library of target organism polypeptides attached to a linker molecule, wherein the library is generated according to a method comprising the steps of: (i) providing a desired polynucleotide sequence from a target organism and a first primer pair capable of amplifying the desired polynucleotide sequence; (ii) performing a first PCR reaction using the first primer pair and the desired polynucleotide sequence, thereby generating an amplified coding sequence, wherein the amplified coding sequence is not transcriptionally active; (iii) adding at least one polynucleotide sequence operably encoding a linker molecule to the amplified coding sequence, thereby generating an amplified coding sequence-linker polynucleotide; (iv) providing a second primer pair capable of adding at least one nucleotide sequence that confers transcriptional activity to the amplified coding sequence-linker polynucleotide; (v) performing a second PCR reaction wit the second primer pair and the amplified coding sequence-linker polynucleotide, thereby generating a transcriptionally active coding sequence-tinker polynucleotide; (vi) expressing a polypeptide from the transcriptionally active coding sequence-linker polynucleotide, wherein expressing the polynucleotide produces a target organism polypeptide attached to a linker molecule; and (vii) repeating steps (i)–(vi) at least 10 times, with different first primer pairs to express different polypeptides of said target organism, thereby generating a library of target organism polypeptides attached to a linker molecule; (b) immobilizing at least 10 of the target organism polypeptides attached to a linker molecule from the library to a solid support, wherein the linker molecule immobilizes the target organism polypeptide to the solid support; and (c) assaying the target organism polypeptides immobilized to the solid support with at least one antibody from an animal that has been immunized with one or more antigens from the target organism, thereby screening a library of target organism polypeptides in order to identify a target organism antigen that is capable of eliciting a humoral immune response.