Detailed analyses of antibodies recognizing mitochondrial antigens suggest similar or identical mechanism for production of natural antibodies and natural autoantibodies

Because of their endosymbiotic evolutionary origin, proteins compartmentalized into mitochondria represent an interesting transition from prokaryotic foreign to essential self molecules. We investigated the presence of naturally occurring antibodies (nAbs) recognizing mitochondrial inner membrane enzymes. Epitope mapping analysis of a mitochondrial inner membrane enzyme, citrate synthase (CS) by synthetic overlapping peptides and phage display libraries using sera from healthy individuals and from patients having systemic autoimmune disease revealed CS recognizing nAbs with IgM isotype. We analyzed cross-reactive epitopes on human CS, bacterial CS, and various standard autoantigens. We have found that the fine epitope pattern on CS is different under physiological and pathological conditions. Moreover sera affinity purified on CS cross reacts with nucleosome antigen, which cross-reactivity could be mapped to a short epitope on human CS. These data indicate that in theory, nAbs “specific” for a given self antigen could fulfill the function of participating in innate defense mechanisms and at the same time recognize a target antigen in a systemic autoimmune disease. Thus, at the level of recognized epitopes there is a possible link between the innate like part and the adaptive-autoimmune arm of the humoral immune system.