In order for antibodies to produce the best results, it is necessary to carefully design the antigen polypeptide. The design should satisfy a basic condition: during immunization, the antigen not only produces an excessive immune response, but also produces antibodies capable of binding to the protein of interest. Although antigen design is a very complex subject, there are many details that require attention beyond what we can provide. Based on our accumulated experience, there are a few key basic design principles that you can refer to:
1. Determine the use (application) of antibodies. It is necessary to find out some basic characteristics of the protein of interest, especially if you know the structure of the protein will be of great help in selecting the recognition regions that the antibody can easily reach and recognize.
2. Principle of Selection of Recognition Regions – In general, the ideal antigen recognition regions should be hydrophilic, located on the surface of the protein, and easily deformed. Because in most natural environments, hydrophilic regions tend to be concentrated on the surface of proteins, while hydrophobic regions tend to be wrapped in proteins.
3. The continuous region of continuous and discontinuous recognition region is the region composed of continuous amino acid sequences (amino acid sequences). most of the antibodies are directed against the continuous recognition region.
