Case Number CH-063

Inventors: Deborah Dean, MD, MPH

Abstract
The invention provides methods and compositions useful for classifying an epitope displayed by a polypeptide, determining the presence of an epitope on a polypeptide encoded by a test nucleotide sequence, generating a nucleotide sequence encoding a polypeptide that exhibits a selected epitope and inducing an immune response to Chlamydia.

Over the last decade, analyses of the genetic diversity of the MOMP gene, ompA, which is the major outer membrane protein of C. trachomatis and the organism's most antigenically diverse protein, have identified genotypes with the surface antigens immunologically distinct from the parent serovar.  Consequently, serotyping of C. trachomatis has been limited by the monoclonal antibodies available for such typing.  The use of epitope mapping to identify determinants of newly identified ompA genotypes is not feasible because this technique is laborious, time consuming, and expensive since numerous recombinant fusion protein or overlapping synthetic peptides need to be generated and tested. 

Advantage
There is a need for methods for predicting structural and functional characteristics of a protein based on a nucleotide sequence encoding the protein and/or amino acid sequence, which this inventions meets.

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