Fig. 3

Epitope mapping of the tetanus toxin. The array content was fabricated as spot duplicates (center-to-center spot distance 254 μm × 508 μm) and the HA and Flag controls in the surrounding frame as single spots (red/green). Two arrays with identical peptide composition (1319 spot duplicates of 15meric peptides) were stained with two sera from tetanus vaccinated individuals (a, b). The array shown in (b) was then stripped from all antibodies using a stripping buffer and afterwards incubated with the serum taken from a third immunized individual (c). The array frames (controls) in (a, b) were stained with anti-Flag (shown in green) and anti-HA antibodies (shown in red). In array (c), the HA control staining was persistent to the stripping buffer, which is why a repeated control staining was omitted. Coinciding peptides in the tetanus toxin mapping are marked in yellow and blue boxes (also see “Discussion”)