Figure 7

Stages of immune response differ in their AAWS. 58 BALB/c mouse serum samples were put into three groups, each corresponding to one stage of immune response: healthy, acute and early chronic. Serum IgM antibody binding profiles were determined using the standard peptide library consisting of 255 14-mers. Corresponding AAWS (${\overrightarrow{w}}^j$) were determined with Equation 1. AAWS were then projected by principal component analysis onto a 2-dimensional subspace spanned by the first two principal components (PC1, PC2). Together, the first two principal components yield a strong separation of healthy and diseased mice. Also acute and early chronic samples separate, although less clearly. The proportion of variance explained by PC1 and PC2 is 90% and 3.4%, respectively. Number of BALB/c mouse serum samples: 15 from healthy mice; after infection with HB: 15 samples at 10 dpi and 13 samples at 14 dpi (acute phase), and 15 samples at 18 dpi (early chronic).