i wonder if a forum is available in which scientists provide their results from cross-reacting antibodies. i have tested a bunch of antibodies from e.g. santa cruz or mitosciences. most of them show no stainings on western or on whole mounts, even those that should work in c. elegans. however, some others worked well. since those antobodies are not for free, it would be possible to prevent this loss of money. i also wonder if such postings are “legal”.
if anyone is interrested in an antibody test consortium, i will start with my experiences IF this is not a kind of illegal activity. i do not want to cause any trouble with antibody selling companies.
I have done a lot of antibody staining and I also have found that some commercially available antibodies work on worms or worm Westerns and some do not. Recently, Mike Nonet’s lab described a lot of nice antibodies to use on worms (A monoclonal antibody toolkit for C. elegans. Hadwiger G, Dour S, Arur S, Fox P, Nonet ML. PLoS One. 2010 Apr 13;5(4):e10161). Seeing his paper got me thinking that it would be nice to have an updated central resource listing ~all of the useful commercially available antibodies for worms.
Since I am the author of the WormBook Immunohistochemistry chapter, I was thinking that an addendum to this chapter would be a great place for a list of useful antibodies. I was also thinking that I could throw in some information on other stains that work specifically on worms (e.g., some of the Molecular Probes stains that work on specific sub-cellular compartments).
Due to the exigencies of teaching, I do not plan to try and amend the chapter until my spring break (March 2011). But I would be delighted to include any information from the community on whether or not specific antibodies work on fixed worms (acetone, methanol, formaldehyde, or glutaraldehyde) or Westerns. That is, not just the positive results, but the results where a specific antibody did not work with a particular technique or fixation protocol.
If you think that inclusion in the WormBook rather than just in the worm community forum would be useful, please contact me (duerr at ohio dot edu) to share your results. I welcome information from anyone in the community on their results using specific antibodies or stains on worms.
Hello,
I am looking for a cytosolic marker for my cell fractionation tests. Could you please tell me if there is a commercial antibody working well for that purpose, for example, HSP90 antibody?
thanks for your reply. i guess that both a forum (to exchange the experience and to continously update) and a wormbook chapter (as a sophisticated summary) make sense. i have started to collect my data of the antibodies i used so far (over the years a lot). as soon i am finished, i want to post the data here, in addition i will send you an email with the detailed information of each antibody.
IN assembling such a list of reagents, you might also check in with ModEncode because they are testing a bunch of the transcription factors and chromatin antibodies and have a website of vaildated and useful antibodies.