SBIR-STTR Award

Gonadal steroid receptors acting as nuclear transcription factors are key polypeptides for determining functions, and multidimensional immunological tools to study these receptors are strongly needed. This proposal concentrates on creating probes for the newly cloned estrogen receptor beta because virtually no immunological reagents are available for its study. Our approach to generating such tools will provide a strategy for defining an immunological product spectrum for many polypeptides of importance for mental health. The strategy follows 3 themes: (1) peptide sequences that are low in certain basic amino acids (especially lysine) which are most susceptible to aldehyde fixation are preferable for generating antisera which optimize utility in immunocytochemistry; (2) antisera which recognize different sequences within the same polypeptide provide the optimal method for establishing polypeptide localization; and (3) antisera which differentiate the phosphorylation state of epitopes are important for establishing polypeptide activation. The proposed products will greatly expand researchers' ability to characterize the roles of specific polypeptides in the central nervous system