Systematic profiling of SARS-CoV-2 specific IgG epitopes at single amino acid resolution

SARS-CoV-2 specific IgG responses play critical roles for patients to recover from COVID-19, in-depth dissecting of the IgG responses on systems level is of great interest. Herein, we adopted a newly developed high-throughput epitope mapping technology (AbMap), analyzed 55 COVID-19 convalescent sera and 226 antibody samples enriched by specific proteins or peptides from these sera. We revealed three areas that are rich of IgG epitopes, two are on Spike protein but outside of RBD, and one is on Nucleocapsid protein. We identified 29 significant epitopes on Spike protein, from two of these significant epitopes, two critical epitope residues were found, i. e., D936 and P1263, which are highly related to the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2. In summary, we provided the first global map of IgG binding epitopes for SARS-CoV-2 at single amino acid resolution. This map will facilitate the precise development of therapeutic antibodies and vaccines.