Santa Cruz antibody - (May/28/2008 )

is it true, that SC ab give a lot of background in IHC? I noticed some background staining but haven't connected it to the SC specifically. How to eliminate it? Or what company is the better source for the primary AB?

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Generally speaking, SC abs do give a lot of background. But that is because they carry 50 million abs. They do have some very good (and abundant in quantity and cheap too) abs.

Don't bother about eliminating background, buy an antibody that has been described in the literature that relates to your study. You just have to scan many papers, taht will help dust up your research knowledge too, so it is a win win.

All companies have good and bad candidates on their catalog, so better to go by other's experience.

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Thanks a lot, Cellcounter-)
THe idea about scanning papers is not bad, but sometimes for a very specific tissue you don't have a lot of published data. You have to learn from your oun mistake :-( or struggle thru non-spec staining.

offtop - have you ever attended this sympiosium? http://www.nsh.org/organizations.php3?acti...mp;itemID=18102
I have questions about it....

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Nope. But you can check out the proceedings of one of their workshops, it looks impressive if that is just one of a dozen workshops.
http://search.vadlo.com/b/q?sn=158621799&a...ology&rel=0
..
I agree about the struggle, especially in IHC. All I can suggest is that you make sure that a working IHC works in your hands and your lab, so that at least general technical problems do not pose as specific staining/antibody problems.

And always do such controls together with your specific staining to convince your PI that you are not "good for nothing" during the months that it takes to standardize your specific staining.

Experience talks

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WOW!!! how do you find all this? Thanks for the link-)
I hope my boss will let me attend some of these workshops this year.
Back to my Q -
in general - do you have a company you go first when you need to find a new AB? For me it was a Sell Signalling and a SC. And it worked for some AB...

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I generally go by literature. I plan my experiment very well {Not showing off}. I typically spend an entire day searching for relevant literature, that saves a lot of time afterwards, in addition to increasing my GK.

But typically,

ChIP - Upstate First choice
IFC - BD Biosciences First choice

I also request a lot of antibodies not commercially available, never shy

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You are a veteran - you have to plan your experiment carefully-))
BD - how I could forget that!!! Thank-you-thank-you-thank-you for reminding me-))) *left to swim in PubMed, see you later*
(So, if you see a great staining in the paper and AB are not commercially available, you just write to the person and ask for the AB?)

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I'll go for Santa Cruz for those that I had good result in the past or my colleagues used as well. They have cheap antibodies and rare one too. But when I urgently need a result, I'll go for Upstate. Covance is good as well.

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Thanks-) I found a big discussion about the SC Ab here. Seems like it is a problem with the Ab, I hope mine will work this time.

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How about the Cell Signalling?

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