Abstract
The phage display is becoming a very powerful technology. Filamentous phages can present on their surface either peptides, proteins or antibody fragments. Peptide libraries are selected on antibodies to rapidly map epitopes, or on purified target to identify interaction sites. Selection on receptors identifies new therapeutic ligands while selection on enzymes identifies new substrates. New protocols are leading to selection on more complex targets as cells, patient serums or tissues. Combinatorial antibody libraries represent a performant alternative to hybridoma technology. Libraries constructed from immunised. repertoires allow rapid selection of high affinity binders. Libraries constructed from naive repertoires allow isolation of low affinity antibodies against a large range of antigens without the need of immunisation. Naive libraries are particularly interesting to isolate human or anti-self antibodies. A large number of biologically active proteins have been expressed on phage and submitted to several rounds of modification/selection on target. This \textless\textless in vitro evolution \textgreater\textgreater represents an excellent tool for structure-function analysis. This review summarises several applications which are developped in an increasing number of laboratories.