Microbiology: Current Research

Novelties in phage display with RNA-coliphage Qβ for diseases point-of-care

4^th International Conference on Medical Microbiology
May 20-21, 2019 | Vienna, Austria

Alain B Waffo

Alabama State University, USA

Keynote : Microbiol Curr Res

Abstract:

The use of naturally occurring phages in agriculture and medicine has flourished for years and now, is continuing to enable novel strategies in synthetic biology. Synthetic biology has refined the way to design modify and enrich to optimize by rationally engineering the phages. New function can be achieved by fusing libraries comprising synthetic peptides with a coat protein of a phage and such peptide is displayed on the phage surface. Phage engineering was made possible with the advances of DNA recombinant technology and was mostly applied to DNA phages. RNA phages possess features that can accelerated evolution and serve as platform or tool phage-based for in vitro evolution. RNA phages RNAdependent- RNA-polymerase enzyme lacks the proof reading activity and this contributes to the genotypic and phenotypic divergence, convergence of evolution and could improve the optimization of any engineering efforts. RNA-Coliphage Qβ has been, is and will be great interest and fascinating platform for evolutionary synthetic biology. Qβ is also an important tool to map the library. Recently, we have successfully constructed and exposed a 5-mer-library of FMDV VP1 G-H loop on the surface of Qβ. The tandem amino acid motif that is required for anti-FMDV monoclonal antibody was selected and evolved with our novel panning system. Epitopes of SARS-CoV spikeproteins were mapped, using Qβ and evaluated for potential antibody neutralizing determinants critically important in the development of an efficacious vaccine candidate. We have demonstrated that recombinant Qβ framed with gp41 MPER of HIV can be used either alone or in combination with other strategies for the production and monitoring of HIV-1 gp41 MPER-specific immune responses. With the volume of reports and papers on RNA viruses’ replication to antiviral therapy and escaping immune molecules, the struggle and difficulties to develop vaccines against these viruses can be alleviated using RNA phage display system.

Biography:

Alain B Waffo has completed his PhD at the age of 33 years from Max- Planck-Institute of Biophysical Chemistry of Goettingen, Germany under the supervision of Profs. Manfred Eigen and Biebricher Christof. He has two postdoctoral trainings in Newark in New Jersey Medical School and in Texas Medical Center. He is the director, advisor of the Biomedical and Capstone programs and associate professor of Alabama State University, USA. His work has been devoted on infectious diseases caused by RNA virus. His research is sponsor by DoD, NIH and NSF. He has over 50 publications that have been cited over 400 times, and his publication H-index is 17 and has been serving as reviewer and an editorial board member of reputed Journals.

E-mail: abopdawaffo@alasu.edu

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