Development of a gold-based immunochromatographic strip assay for the detection of ancient silk

Abstract

The origin of silks remains one of the most puzzling mysteries. However, the on-site identification of ancient silks usually becomes particularly difficult after thousands of years due to degradation and sample contamination. In this paper, a portable immunochromatographic strip (ICS) technique using colloidal gold-labelled polyclonal antibody was well-designed and developed. This technique requires only 10 min to complete the qualitative detection of silks. The strip exhibits good sensitivity, specificity and thermal stability. The detection limit of the strip is 1.5 μg/mL, and no cross-reactions with other possible interference antigens were noted. Moreover, the strip can maintain the effectiveness after treated at 60°C for 30 days. These characteristics make the ICS assay to be especially suitable for the on-site detection in archaeological field.

Development of an enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay based on the monoclonal antibody of Bombyx mori to detect ancient silk

“…Fibroin polyclonal antibodies were prepared from the repeat sequence GAGAGSGAGAGS, which was found in fibroin from the silkworm, and from fibroin hydrolysate, which contained the fibroin peptide segments (Liu et al . ,b; Zheng et al . ).…”

“…The polyclonal fibroin antibody had high specificity and sensitivity for silk and did not cross‐react with wool, hemp and cotton, but these antibodies could not be used for the identification of silk species (Liu et al . ,b; Zheng et al . ).…”

“…There was the type of sequence in the mulberry silk, such as GAGAGSGAGAGS, which had been reported previously (Liu et al . ,b; Zheng et al . ).…”

“…In our previous work, ELISA, IFM, gold‐based immunochromatographic strip assay and lanthanide‐labelled immunochromatographic strip testing, all based on polyclonal antibodies, were proposed and successfully used for the detection of ancient proteinous fibres and fabrics (Liu et al . ,b; Zheng et al . ; Liu et al .…”

Characterizing historical textiles and clothing with proteomics

“…For ancient textiles, DNA and FTIR are of limited interest: FTIR spectroscopy lacks specificity [50], while DNA recovery is generally inadequate in wool and may be further hampered by alterations due to degradation of the wool, dyes and burial conditions [53]. Recently immunological techniques using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and immuno-fluorescence microscopy have been applied to both ancient wool [54][55] and silk [56][57][58].…”