Carbohydrate Specificity of Antibodies Against Yeast Preparations of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida krusei

Laboratory animals (the California rabbit) were immunized with natural preparations of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida krusei yeasts. The resulting sera have been analyzed with ligand libraries constructed from synthetic oligosaccharides related to the main carbohydrate components of the fungal cell wall. It is shown that the antibodies in the studied sera predominantly recognize mannan fragments, with the carbohydrate specificity profile being different for S. cerevisiae and C. krusei. Sera against S. cerevisiae contained antibodies that recognize β-glucan, and the minimal recognizable epitope is linear trisaccharide. These results are necessary for the creation of needed immunoenzyme diagnostics for the detection and species characterization of fungi.