Immunochemical activity of <i>Yersinia pseudotuberculosis</i> ompF and ompC porins evaluated by optical trapping

Introduction. Study of features for interacting antigen-antibody system is of great importance for developing new modern tools for diagnostics and therapy of infectious diseases. In this regard, it is of great interest to study the rupture force between bacterial antigens and antibodies using modern biophysical methods including optical trapping. The importance of surface antigens in the immunochemical activity of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis assessed by such method has not been evaluated yet. In this work we examined an opportunity to evaluate the interaction of hydrophobic Y. pseudotuberculosis porins OmpF and OmpC with specific antibodies using optical trapping method. Materials and methods. Polystyrene microspheres (d = 1 m) were coated by passive adhesion with purified preparations of OmpF and OmpC porins; microsphere sensitization was verified by enzyme immunoassay. Antibodies from mouse sera were adsorbed onto the glass surface by chemical linking. The rupture force in the porins-antibodies system was determined using a laser trap according to the previously developed algorithm. Results. Using a model system including polystyrene microspheres sensitized with the proteins and aminated glass substrate coated with immune or nonimmune serum, significant differences in binding strength of OmpF and OmpC porins to homologous immune versus nonimmune sera were detected. The average forces of interaction with immune sera was 60 pN for OmpF microspheres (control 40 pN) and 69 pN for OmpC microspheres (control 49 pN). The proportion of irreversible substrate binding of the microspheres coated by the antigens to the treated with immune vs. non-immune sera was significantly higher. The results of assessing the average interaction force, as well as the predominance of the proportion of irreversible binding of antigen-coated microspheres with sera-treated substrates, indicates that specific interactions contribute significantly to the force of interaction. The aforementioned method can be used to evaluate the forces of intermolecular interaction in similar model systems using other microbial antigens.