Is a protein of 24KD too small to serve as the antigen? - help! (Feb/12/2007 )
Hi,dear all:
I have recently purified a protein of 24KD and as the next step I want to immune rabbits to produce the antibody. The question is whether my protein is too small to serve as the antigen? I konw clone the gene into the pET-32a vector can make a fusion protein which is larger but I'm also afraid the tag may affect the speicificty of the antibody. Does anyone experienced have suggestions to me? THank you very much!
I have recently purified a protein of 24KD and as the next step I want to immune rabbits to produce the antibody. The question is whether my protein is too small to serve as the antigen? I konw clone the gene into the pET-32a vector can make a fusion protein which is larger but I'm also afraid the tag may affect the speicificty of the antibody. Does anyone experienced have suggestions to me? THank you very much!
Hi
I also use tagged protein antigen to select antibodies. To eliminate tag binders an unrelated tagged protein is used to verify the antigen specificity of the selected antibody.
It's big enough, problems start somewhere below 5 kDa.
The 24KDa protein is more than enough for producing antibodies. This also studied practically in animals. I don't know what is u r specific protein but i am working on Hep-b vaccine characterization studies where the active immunogenic antigen is a 24KDa protein and it produce antibodies.