Production of monoclonal anti-thymine-dimer antibody and its use for detection of STR alleles.
To simplify the manual detection of STRs, we developed an immunoblotting method using an anti-thymine-dimer antibody. Upon ultraviolet irradiation, adjacent thymine residues in a DNA strand readily form thymine dimers which are detectable by anti-thymine-dimer antibody. We simply irradiated the supernatant of a boiled suspension of P3U1 myeloma cells with ultraviolet rays, and immunized BALB/c mice with it. By fusing their popliteal lymph node cells with the P3U1 myeloma cell line, we produced a monoclonal anti-thymine-dimer antibody. Using this antibody, we were able to detect STR alleles containing AAAG, AAGG, or AATG repeats by immunoblotting. Our method is well suited for use in parentage testing.