After running your gel and transferring your proteins to your membrane, there is one thing left for you to do to ensure the accurate analysis of your protein. You need to block all unoccupied sites on your membrane to prevent the non-specific binding of antibodies and other detection agents to your membrane during subsequent steps. If you take this step lightly, you'll risk compromising the reliability your results.
Topics: Western Blotting
Sodium dodecyl sulfate or SDS, is an anionic surfactant (detergent) commonly used in research lab due to its multiple functions.
Topics: Detergents
Western blotting is an immunodetection technique used to first separate proteins by gel electrophoresis then to transfer those separated proteins from the gel matrix onto a secondary, more durable matrix, most commonly polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) or nitrocellulose.
Topics: Western Blotting
When working on proteins, your sample biological materials should first be homogenized to ensure proper solubilization and extraction. This can be a challenge if you are trying to extract plant proteins because their tissues contain significant amounts of proteases, phosphatases and glycosidases which can interfere with the results. In addition, not all biological materials require the same technique so you should really be careful when choosing the technique that you would use.
Topics: Protein Extraction
