| Plasmodiophora brassicae is the protist responsible for clubroot disease. There is no way to quickly and specifically detect it in the soil. In the hopes of overcoming the specificity and sensibility limitations of antibody assays, we have developed a high avidity macromolecule with increased specificity. Phage display is used to select peptides specific to our target and papaya mosaic virus serves as a scaffold to present a high number of copies of these peptides. P. brassicae resting spores are effectively detected from a mix of common soil fungi by flow cytometry. For routine applications, this affinity macromolecule could be used in ELISA tests or, if conjugated with magnetic beads, used to extract the resting spores from the soil and detect the presence of the parasite by PCR. |
