T7 Lytic Phage-Displayed Peptide Libraries: Construction and Diversity Characterization

In this chapter, we describe the construction of T7 bacteriophage (phage)-displayed peptide libraries and the diversity analyses of random amino acid sequences obtained from the libraries. We used commercially available reagents, Novagen’s T7Select system, to construct the libraries. Using a combination of biotinylated extension primer and streptavidin-coupled magnetic beads, we were able to prepare library DNA without applying gel purification, resulting in extremely high ligation efficiencies. Further, we describe the use of bioinformatics tools to characterize library diversity. Amino acid frequency and positional amino acid diversity and hydropathy are estimated using the REceptor LIgand Contacts website http://relic.bio.anl.gov . Peptide net charge analysis and peptide hydropathy analysis are conducted using the Genetics Computer Group Wisconsin Package computational tools. A comprehensive collection of the estimated number of recombinants and titers of T7 phage-displayed peptide libraries constructed in our lab is included.