Vectors and Modes of Display

Construction of molecular chimeras from different sources has been routine in molecular biology since gene splicing began in the middle of 1970s. For a detailed discussion of the genetics and biochemistry of molecular cloning systems, refer to the comprehensive survey of vectors edited by and Denhardt In 1985, recombinant DNA techniques were used to fashion a new type of chimera that underlies today’s phage display technology (2). To create one of these chimeras, a foreign coding sequence is spliced in-frame into a phage coat protein gene, so that the ‘‘guest’’ peptide encoded by that sequence is fused to a coat protein and thereby displayed on