Method for tapping the immunological repertoire

1. A method of making an antibody to an antigen, comprising the steps of:

(a) producing a V H -coding library and a V L -coding library, by a method comprising the steps of:

(i) providing a polynucleotide containing composition that comprises a plurality of different V H -coding sequences and V L -coding sequences;

(ii) adding to said composition a first V H primer and a first V L primer wherein said first primers are capable of hybridizing to first conserved nucleotide sequences substantially adjacent to a plurality of V H -coding and V L -coding sequences respectively present in said composition, and a second V H primer and a second V L primer wherein said second primers are capable of hybridizing to second conserved nucleotide sequences downstream of and on the complementary strand to said first conserved nucleotide sequences respectively; and

(iii) amplifying V H and V L coding sequences to obtain a V H and a V L coding library;

(b) ligating V H -coding sequences from said V H -coding gene library and V L -coding sequences from said V L -coding gene library into expression vectors;

(c) transforming a host cell with said expression vectors so that an antibody is produced by coexpression of a V H -coding sequence from said V H -coding library and a V L -coding sequence from said V L -coding library, either on the same or different expression vectors; and

(d) isolating an antibody produced by said host cell and testing the specificity of the antibody for said antigen.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the source of said plurality of V H -coding and V L -coding sequences is rearranged B cells collected from an animal immunised with said antigen.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein said VH-coding sequences and VL-coding sequences are human VH- and VL-coding sequences.