Antibodies. You can’t live with ‘em; you can’t live without ‘em. Even though they can sometimes drive epigenetic scientists nuts, top-notch antibodies continue to have a critical role in several epigenetic applications used in labs everyday. We’ve featured several articles that try to make life a little easier for those who work with antibodies. Take a look.
ChIP Antibody Performance
ENCODE and Roadmap Epigenomics Antibody Validation Database
There is now a place that can help separate the good antibodies from the not-so-good ones, called The Antibody Validation Database, and it was designed to “collect and to share experimental results on antibodies that would otherwise remain in individual laboratories, thus aiding researchers in selection and validation of antibodies.”
Naughty and Nice ChIP Antibodies
A consortium of chromatin researchers found out which ChIP antibodies are naughty or nice, by testing a ton of commercial antibodies raised against 3 histones with 57 different modifications in flies, worms, and humans.
ChIP Tips and Guides
ChIPs and MeDIP: ChIP Antibody Selection Tips
Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) remains a powerful method to characterize in vivo binding of DNA hugging proteins like histones and transcription factors and more recently has been used effectively for DNA methylation studies. The ChIP technique has been around since the days of big hair and “Miami Vice,” so we won’t review it here much, but here are some tips to help you pick the best possible antibody.
A Beginner’s Guide to ChIP
Do you lay awake at night reflecting on how much you want to get started with ChIP, but stressed that you don’t know where to start? Who doesn’t? Good thing for you, Abcam’s ChIP guide has come to your rescue, so you can rest at ease counting sheep instead.
On Your Marks: Key Abs That Should be in Every Epigenetics Researcher’s Fridge
Chromatin is a complicated scene. Staying on top of who’s who in residue and degree-specific histone modifications and chromatin modifying proteins is more than a full time job. So, if you’re looking to jump start your investigations and pull down some quick hitting data, you’ll want to consider picking up on some quality antibodies targeting these influential marks and proteins.
Chromatin Antibody Products
Pull Down a Winner with Abcam Antibody Panels
Deciding which antibody will be “the one” in your ChIP applications isn’t easy, but you can relax a bit now as our good friends at Abcam have just launched Abcam Antibody Panels; a way to let researchers “play the field” with trial-sized aliquots of antibody sets before they decide to settle down with just one.
How ChIP Antibodies are Made
Making The ChIP Grades
A lot has changed in the world of location analysis, but the need for good antibodies remains the same; which is probably why we hear a lot of different ChIP antibody adjectives being thrown around to separate the top performers from the pack. We asked Millipore what the deal is with the various flavors of ChIP antibodies out there to get a better idea of which ones are bitter or sweet.
Raising the Bar on ChIP Antibody QC
The old adage of garbage in/garbage out not only means time and effort wasted…choosing a non-functioning antibody nowadays can create some very expensive trash. How do you know which antibodies to trust? Our hands are jittery just thinking about it; of course that might just be the caffeine.??
5-Hydroxymethylcytosine Antibodies
Doubling Down on 5-hmC Profiling with Dual MeDIP from Diagenode
A year after 5-hydroxymethylcytosine’s (5-hmC) dramatic entrance into the epigenetics research scene, the research community has a long list of questions to ask about the 6th base. Investigations into 5-hmC were sidelined for most of the year due to the absence of methods to analyze it. Thankfully those helpless days are history as Diagenode just launched the first 5-hmC mononclonal antibody, an innovation that makes enriching and analyzing 5-hmC a reality.