ABSTRACT
Humoral Responses One potential difference for DNA vaccines for humoral immune responses in comparison to recombinantly made antigens is that antigens made in situ following immunization with plasmid DNA will have mammalian post-translational modifications such as glycosylation whereas antigens produced recombinantly in bacteria, yeast, or baculoviruses may not have these same modifications and hence may differ antigenically from the pathogen’s version. Of course if the antigen is one from an intracellular pathogen such as M. tuberculosis, the posttranslational modifications would not normally be mammalian, so this would not provide an advantage. But for a large number of antigens, this mammalian post-translational processing ensures that the vaccine antigen is more like the native version.
