Techniques to Decipher Molecular Diversity by Phage Display

Combinatorial phage display technology may be applied to decipher the molecular diversity of peptide binding specificity to isolated proteins, purified antibodies, cell surfaces, intracellular/cyto-domains, and blood vessels in vivo. The application of such a strategy ranges from identifying receptor-ligand pairs and antigen binding sites to understanding the progression of diseases by their differential expression patterns and developing therapeutic targeting strategies. Different strategies can be used to isolate peptides from diverse libraries displayed on the surface of bacteriophage by exposing the library to a target molecule or organ, washing away nonbinding phage, eluting and amplifying the bound phage for multiple round use, and then analyzing the peptide sequences of the enriched phage. The following methods first outline the construction of a phage library and then delineate various in vitro and in vivo biopanning applications to probe isolated integrins, purified antibodies, cell surface molecules, and vascular endothelial cells.