Production of Polyclonal and Monoclonal Antibodies Against the Bacillus thuringiensis Vegetative Insecticidal Protein Vip3Aa16

The aim of this study is to establish a quantitative determination of the vegetative insecticidal protein Vip3A from the culture supernatant of Bacillus thuringiensis either by ELISA or by the conventional quantification method of the Western blot band. The Vip3A protein was produced by fermentation of the B. thuringiensis reference strain BUPM95 in 3 L. By Western blot, the Vip3Aa16 toxin was detected in the culture supernatant during the exponential growth phase of B. thuringiensis BUPM95. However, the detection of Vip3Aa16 on Western blot showed in addition to the toxin two other strips (62 and 180 kDa) recognized by the anti-Vip3Aa16 polyclonal antibodies prepared at the Centre of Biotechnology of Sfax Tunisia. For that reason and in order to develop a technique for reliable quantification of the toxin, we have considered the production of polyclonal antibodies at the Julius Kuhn Institute, Germany. These antibodies were the basis for the production of monoclonal antibodies directed against the protein produced by the Vip3Aa16 recombinant strain Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3). These monoclonal antibodies were tested by plate-trapped antigen (PTA) and triple antibody sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (TAS-ELISA). The selection of hybridoma supernatants gave us four positive clones producing monoclonal antibodies.