One of the key issues with polyclonal antibody quality is the purity of the antibody preparation. Polyclonal antibodies are sold in many different preparations including “crude serum” and “purified”. Crude serum has an IgG concentration of about 10 mg/ml, but the concentration of any specific antibody in that pool of IgG is rarely more than […]
Part 3 – From Academia to Antibodies that WorkTM It was about this time that I got a call from Antonio Norohna, the executive secretary handling my antibody grant. To my surprise, Antonio told me that he wanted me to make my antibodies commercially available. Well, this was a complete surprise to me, but Antonio […]
Part 2 – From New York to NMDA or Red Meat, Oops In 1987 I applied for a tenure track position at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. In my job seminar I described using a technique called “red blood cell mediated microinjection” in which you loaded red blood cells with antibodies and fused […]
After we merged our company together with Antibodies Incorporated and Aves Labs, a number of the members of these companies got together for dinner. During dinner someone asked me how I got into antibodies. I replied with a short story that Kristin Nixon, our President, had heard before. However, she said she liked hearing me tell it […]
In an article in Nature on antibody quality (Monya Baker, Nature 527:545-551, 2015) a study was cited in which antibodies were used in over 2000 studies. Among these polyclonal antibodies were used in 1293 studies, monoclonals were used in 755 papers. This preference for polyclonal antibodies has been echoed in a number of other more […]
When I was a Ph.D. mentor, one of the most satisfying and also challenging tasks was helping my graduate students pursue their career in a manner consistent with their true aptitudes and interests. It is typical that a graduate student seeking a Ph.D. in the biological sciences has the prospect of an academic career uppermost […]
PhosphoSolutions is proud to announce its new partnership with Davis, CA-based Antibodies Incorporated and Aves Labs, two providers of highly-validated antibodies to the research community. About Antibodies Incorporated Founded in 1962, Antibodies Incorporated boasts a catalog of nearly 500 mouse monoclonal antibodies against critical neuroscience targets, many of which have been knockout validated in mouse […]
The Choice of Secondary Antibody is one of the Most Overlooked Issues in Immunochemistry. After the tissue of interest has been incubated with the primary antibody, the next critical step involves incubating the tissue in a labeled secondary antibody to detect the presence of the primary antibody. The choice of the secondary antibody has to […]
As we have discussed previously in this blog, there is widespread concern about antibody validation. Of course some forms of validation using multiple antibodies or knockouts are not available for the majority of targets of interest to researchers. But western blots are a excellent form of validation that can be readily performed by almost […]
In the past year there have been a number of articles in Nature and other major journals that discuss the antibody problem in somewhat apocalyptic terms. In my mind there are only two main issues in the antibody problem: antibody validation and antibody variability. Both of these issues have straightforward solutions that do not […]
Antibody validation is a topic that has garnered a great deal of attention lately in discussions of the problem with the lack of reproducibility in science. One type of antibody validation that should be avoided uses purified recombinant proteins. In a typical study of this type a purified recombinant protein is run on a western […]
In a recent article in Nature Methods, Vivien Marx discussed some of the key issues relating to the use of antibodies http://tinyurl.com/osygswn. Variability in the quality of the antibodies available commercially was one of the principal problems encountered by scientists in her article. This problem is closely related to the larger issue addressed in […]