New Approach for Development of Sensitive and Environmentally Friendly Immunoassay for Mycotoxin Fumonisin B1 Based on Using Peptide-MBP Fusion Protein as Substitute for Coating Antigen

Here, on the basis of mimotope of small analytes, we demonstrated a new approach for development of sensitive and environmentally friendly immunoassay for toxic small analytes based on the peptide-MBP fusion protein. In this work, using mycotoxin fumonisin B1 (FB1) as a model hapten, phage displayed peptide (mimotope) that binds to the anti-FB1 antibody were selected by biopanning from a 12-mer peptide library. The DNA coding for the sequence of peptide was cloned into Escherichia coli ER2738 as a fusion protein with a maltose binding protein (MBP). The prepared peptide-MBP fusion protein are “clonable” homogeneous and FB1-free products and can be used as a coating antigen in the immunoassay. The half inhibition concentration of the quantitative immunoassay setup with fusion protein (F1-MBP and F15-MBP) was 2.15 ± 0.13 ng/mL and 1.26 ± 0.08 ng/mL, respectively. The fusion protein (F1-MBP) was also used to develop a qualitative Elispot assay with a cutoff level of 2.5 ng/mL, which was 10-fold more sensitive than that measured for chemically synthesized FB1–BSA conjugates based Elispot immunoassay. The peptide-MBP fusion protein not only can be prepared reproducibly as homogeneous and FB1-free products in a large-scale but also can contribute to the development of a highly sensitive immunoassay for analyzing FB1. Furthermore, the novel concept might provide potential applications to a general method for the immunoassay of various toxic small molecules.