Development and characterization of monoclonal antibodies against human aryl hydrocarbon receptor
Wenjing Tian , Xinhui Pei , Heidi Qunhui Xie
,
Sherry Li Xu
,
Jijing Tian
,
Qin Hu
,
Haiming Xu
,
Yangsheng Chen
,
Hualing Fu
,
Zhengyu Cao
,
Bin Zhao
DOI:10.1016/j.jes.2015.11.008
Received July 31, 2015,Revised November 09, 2015, Accepted November 16, 2015, Available online December 22, 2015
Volume 28,2016,Pages 165-174
Aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), a ligand-dependent nuclear receptor, is involved in a diverse spectrum of biological and toxicological effects. Due to the lack of three dimensional (3D) crystal or nuclear magnetic resonance structure, the mechanisms of these complex effects of AhR remain to be unclear. Also, commercial monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against human AhR protein (hAhR), as alternative immunological tools, are very limited. Thus, in order to provide more tools for further studies on hAhR, we prepared two mAbs (1D6 and 4A6) against hAhR. The two newly generated mAbs specifically bound to amino acids 484–508 (located in transcription activation domain) and amino acids 201–215 (located in Per-ARNT-Sim domain) of hAhR, respectively. These epitopes were new as compared with those of commercial mAbs. The mAbs were also characterized by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, western blot, immunoprecipitation and indirect immunofluorescence assay in different cell lines. The results showed that the two mAbs could recognize the linearized AhRs in six different human cell lines and a rat hepatoma cell line, as well as the hAhR with native conformations. We concluded that the newly generated mAbs could be employed in AhR-based bioassays for analysis of environmental contaminants, and held great potential for further revealing the spatial structure of AhR and its biological functions in future studies.
