The innate immune system are a cooperation of many components – receptors being one of them. Both membrane-bound and cytosolic receptors play a large role in the defence system against pathogens and danger. NLRP3 is a receptor which assembles a protein complex called inflammasome in response to cytosolic stress and is responsible for many autoimmune diseases if it malfunctions. The activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome leads to secretion of inflammatory cytokines and in many cases to programmed cell death. The structure, function and activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome is still not fully understood and the urge to understand the mechanisms behind are important for future medical improvements. The aim was to anchor the NLRP3 inflammasome by the cell membrane - By Overlap PCR, the NLRP3 cDNA was fused extracellular and trans-membrane parts of the TLR4 cDNA to anchor the NLRP3 to the membrane and in turn analyse the inflammasome with LPI™ technology. Multiple primers and a TLR4 nucleotide were designed and the NLRP3 was amplified with specific overhangs by PCR. The fusion protein was successfully linked together by Overlap PCR but not confirmed by sequencing. The gene fusion demands high quality primers for amplification and further evaluation must be made to the details of the laboratory. To anchor the protein complex to the cell membrane, continue to be of full importance and can be an asset in many structural studies and biopharmaceuticals trials.

Anticorpos são moléculas de grande interesse científico e farmacêutico, principalmente, devido a sua alta especificidade contra antígenos determinados. Atualmente, anticorpos monoclonais estão entre os medicamentos (biofármacos) mais vendidos do mundo. São utilizados para o tratamento das mais diversas doenças, como câncer, retinopatias, doenças inflamatórias e do sistema imune, entre outras. Nos últimos 30 anos, as tecnologias para a obtenção de anticorpos monoclonais evoluíram muito, desde a tecnologia do hibridoma, até os processos de humanização de anticorpos murinos. Entre os métodos mais utilizados para a produção de anticorpos humanos, destaca-se a tecnologia do Phage Display. Nesta técnica, os genes que codificam as regiões variáveis de imunoglobulinas são inseridos no genoma de um bacteriófago, resultando na produção de partículas virais híbridas que contém fragmentos de anticorpos em fusão com uma das proteínas do capsídeo viral. Neste trabalho, desenvolvemos novos vetores para a apresentação de fragmentos ScFv em fusão com duas proteínas das proteínas do capsídeo viral, a pIII e pVIII. Os oligonucleotídeos utilizados para amplificar os genes de imunoglobulinas foram redesenhados e para minimizar a perda do repertório durante a produção da biblioteca, avaliamos em bancos de dados enzimas de restrição que não apresentam sítios de restrição nas sequencias gênicas. Esses sítios de restrição foram utilizados para construir as regiões de clonagem do vetor Phagemid. Outra etapa crítica na produção de bibliotecas de anticorpos é a reação do PCR de overlap, que pode restringir a diversidade de anticorpos e resultar na produção de amplicons codificando anticorpos truncados. Por isso, nossos vetores foram desenhados para permitir a clonagem direta das regiões variáveis das imunoglobulinas humanas ou murinas, sem a necessidade do PCR de overlap. Nossa expectativa, é que estes novos reagentes serão mais efetivos para a produção de novas bibliotecas de anticorpos pelo sistema do Phage Display. / Antibodies are molecules of great scientific and pharmaceutical interest, mainly because of their high specificity against certain antigens. Currently, monoclonal antibodies are among the best selling drugs (biopharmaceuticals) in the world. They are used for the treatment of the most diverse disorders, such as cancer, retinopathies, inflammatory and immune system diseases, among others. In the past 30 years, technologies for obtaining monoclonal antibodies has greatly evolved from hybridoma technology to the humanization processes of murine antibodies. Among the methods used for the production of human antibodies, the technology of Phage Display stands out. In this technique, the genes encoding the immunoglobulin variable regions are inserted into the genome of a bacteriophage, resulting in the production of hybrid virus particles which contain fragments of antibodies in fusion with one of the viral capsid proteins. In this work, we developed new vectors for the presentation of ScFv fragments in fusion with two proteins of viral capsid proteins, pIII and pVIII. The oligonucleotides used to amplify the immunoglobulin genes were redesigned and to minimize repertory loss during library production, we evaluated restriction enzymes in databases that lack restriction sites in the gene sequences. These restriction sites were used to construct the cloning regions of the Phagemid vector. Another critical step in the production of antibody libraries is the overlap PCR reaction, which may restrict the diversity of antibodies and result in the production of amplicons encoding truncated antibodies. Therefore, our vectors were designed to allow the direct cloning of human or murine Immunoglobulins variable regions without the need for overlap PCR. Our expectation is that these new reagents will be more effective for the production of new antibody libraries by the Phage Display system.