Identification and characterization of phage clones that
bind mammalian host cells
To identify bacterial cell surface proteins that mediate
attachment to host cells, a L. interrogans filamentous phage
display library was constructed. The vector used in generating the
library, fdBUG, cannot express the phage coat protein III because
of the stop codons in all three reading frames near the 59 end of
gene III [37]. Cloning of L. interrogans DNA fragments that
encode an open reading frame continuous with that of the phage
gene III allows expression of leptospiral peptides as fusions to the
minor coat protein on the surface of the phage. Based on the
average L. interrogans DNA fragment size of 500 bp (inserted in
fdBUG vector) and its genome size of 4.5 Mbp, the number of
clones necessary to represent the entire genome is ,41,800.