The Protein Man's Blog | A Discussion of Protein Research

The bicinchroninic acid (BCA) assay, also known as the Smith assay, is a biochemical assay used to determine the total concentration of protein in a solution. Due to its ability to provide accurate determination of protein concentration and its compatibility with most protein sample types, protein laboratories around the world prefer the BCA assay over any other detergent-compatible assays.

We recently reviewed the advantages of total protein membrane stains as a loading control for Western blotting and demonstrated how they were an improvement on routinely used housekeeping genes.

What's best? Housekeeping genes or total protein for Western blot loading controls

Western blotting is a very popular and sensitive protein detection system that is routinely used for multiple areas of protein research.  The sensitivity of this detection system continues to improve with increasingly sensitive enhanced chemiluminescence systems and the increasing popularity of IR (infra-red) fluorophores and IR imaging systems:

Due to its high sensitivity, wide dynamic range, and high signal-to-noise ratio, enhanced chemiluminescence or ECL is considered as one of the most popular detection methods for a variety of western blotting applications in most protein laboratories around the world. This method also proves to be very useful in the quantification of a wide variety of biological materials such as cells, proteins, RNA, DNA, and a host of other analytes.