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Immunogenicity of Nitric Oxide Modified Chromatin and Its Implications in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

¹Department of Clinical Biochemistry, College of Medicine, King Khalid University, Abha, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

²Department of Biochemistry, College of Medicine, Jawahar Lal Nehru Medical College, Aligarh, India

*Corresponding author

Sarah Afaq,PhD

Assistant Professor

Department of Clinical Biochemistry

College of Medicine

King Khalid University, Abha

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

PO Box 641

Email: sarah.afaq@gmail.com

Abstract

Freshly isolated chromatin from goat liver, exposed to nitric oxide (generated by the reduction of sodium nitrite with sodium dithionite) caused structural alterations and loss of tertiary structure of chromatin along with strand breaks and base modifications in the DNA of chromatin. The NO-chromatin was highly immunogenic in experimental animals as compared to its native form. Induced antibodies were highly specific for their respective immunogen.  However, delineating the antigenic specificity of anti -NO-chromatin antibodies by competition ELISA, multiple cross-reactivity was observed. Anti-NO-chromatin antibodies recognized human blood proteins, modified tyrosine polymers and histones. Moreover, NO modified conformers were better recognized than their native forms. The visual detection of immune complex formation with native and NO-chromatin reiterated preferential binding with modified chromatin. Chromatin modified by nitric oxide presents unique epitopes which may be one of the factors in antigen driven autoimmune response in SLE.

Keywords:  autoantibodies; chromatin; NO-chromatin; nitric oxide; SLE.

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