EVALUATION OF IRON REGULATED PROTEIN LINEAR AND CONFORMATIONAL EPITOPESIN VIBRIO CHOLERAE

Abstract

Iron is essential for the growth of most bacteria, but in nature the element is highly insoluble in an aerobic environment and therefore unavailable to most organisms. Inside the human body, most iron is in the cell in the form of hemoglobin or other iron-containing proteins or is stored as ferritin. Trace amounts of iron are found outside the cell complexed to high-affinity iron-binding proteins such as lactoferrin or transferrin.In vivo-grown V. cholerae expressed novel outer membrane associated proteins which, in part, were similar to those observed on V. cholera grown in vitro under conditions of iron deprivation. The ability of microorganisms to acquire iron is essential to their ability to colonize and tom cause disease in animal hosts and may also be a determinant of the nature of the host-parasite relationship.In the present study we exploit bioinformatic tools to introduce the best regions of iron-regulated OMP as antigenic determinants in order to design (a) novel construct (s) as vaccine or diagnostics.