Isolation and characterization of monoclonal antibodies against the adenovirus core proteins

Monoclonal antibodies have been prepared that recognize adenovirus core proteins V, VII, and μ in ELISA and ] Western blot assays. Antibodies produced by all of 87 positive hybridoma colonies obtained from a mouse injected with the precursor to protein VII, pVll, produced antibodies that also reacted with purified protein VII in an ELISA assay and all tested recognized denatured protein VII immobilized on nitrocellulose. Such failure to recover antibodies that specifically recognized only protein pVll suggests that epitopes common to the 174 amino acid protein VII and its 197 amino acid precursor were more effective antigenic determinants than the N-terminal 23 amino acid segment unique to pVll. All antibodies raised against protein μ cross-reacted with protein VII in both assays, but only a small fraction of the anti-protein VII or pVll antibodies recognized protein μ. Such cross-reactivity is discussed in relation to an unusual, arginine-rich sequence present in both protein VII and protein μ.