Dose of Incorporated Immunodominant Antigen in Recombinant BCG Impacts Modestly on Th1 Immune Response and Protective Efficiency against Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Mice

Figure 1

Expression of chimeric antigen Ag856A2 in rBCG strains by Western blotting. Equal amounts of lysates supernatant from cell crude extracts of (r)BCGs were run in SDS-PAGE and then probed with mouse antiserum to Ag85A. The origin of the lysate is marked in the top. Band intensities of Ag856A2 and Ag85A from BCG, rBCG186, and rBCG486 were quantified by densitometry (Image-J software) and divided by cognate band intensity from rBCG186 (relative densitometry). Lane “r856A2” represents rAg856A2 purified after expression in E. coli and serving as the positive control. The staining intensity of native Ag85A was roughly at the same level in all lanes, indicating that equal amounts of whole cell lysates were loaded. The result is representative of two independent experiments. ^∗The degradative form of rAg856A2.