Construction of Synthetic Phage Displayed Fab Library with Tailored Diversity

Demand for monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) in basic research and medicine is increasing yearly. Hybridoma technology has been the dominant method for mAb development since its first report in 1975. As an alternative technology, phage display methods for mAb development are increasingly attractive since Humira, the first phage-derived antibody and one of the best-selling mAbs, was approved for clinical treatment of rheumatoid arthritis in 2002. As a non-animal based mAb development technology, phage display bypasses antigen immunogenicity, humanization, and animal maintenance that are required from traditional hybridoma technology based antibody development. In this protocol, we describe a method for construction of synthetic phage-displayed Fab libraries with diversities of 109-1010 obtainable with a single electroporation. This protocol consists of: 1) high-efficiency electro-competent cell preparation; 2) extraction of uracil-containing single-stranded DNA (dU-ssDNA); 3) Kunkel's method based oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis; 4) electroporation and calculation of library size; 5) protein A/L-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for folding and functional diversity evaluation; and 6) DNA sequence analysis of diversity.