Evolving serodiagnostics by rationally designed peptide arrays: the Burkholderia paradigm in Cystic Fibrosis

Efficient diagnosis of emerging and novel bacterial infections is
fundamental to guide decisions on therapeutic treatments. Here, we
engineered a novel rational strategy to design peptide microarray
platforms, which combines structural and genomic analyses to predict the
binding interfaces between diverse protein antigens and antibodies
against Burkholderia cepacia complex infections present in the sera of
Cystic Fibrosis (CF) patients. The predicted binding interfaces on the
antigens are synthesized in the form of isolated peptides and chemically
optimized for controlled orientation on the surface. Our platform
displays multiple Burkholderia-related epitopes and is shown to diagnose
infected individuals even in presence of superinfections caused by other
prevalent CF pathogens, with limited cost and time requirements.
Moreover, our data point out that the specific patterns determined by
combined probe responses might provide a characterization of
Burkholderia infections even at the subtype level (genomovars). The
method is general and immediately applicable to other bacteria.