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An assessment of histone-modification antibody quality.

Nature structural & molecular biology (2010-12-07)
Thea A Egelhofer, Aki Minoda, Sarit Klugman, Kyungjoon Lee, Paulina Kolasinska-Zwierz, Artyom A Alekseyenko, Ming-Sin Cheung, Daniel S Day, Sarah Gadel, Andrey A Gorchakov, Tingting Gu, Peter V Kharchenko, Samantha Kuan, Isabel Latorre, Daniela Linder-Basso, Ying Luu, Queminh Ngo, Marc Perry, Andreas Rechtsteiner, Nicole C Riddle, Yuri B Schwartz, Gregory A Shanower, Anne Vielle, Julie Ahringer, Sarah C R Elgin, Mitzi I Kuroda, Vincenzo Pirrotta, Bing Ren, Susan Strome, Peter J Park, Gary H Karpen, R David Hawkins, Jason D Lieb
ABSTRACT

We have tested the specificity and utility of more than 200 antibodies raised against 57 different histone modifications in Drosophila melanogaster, Caenorhabditis elegans and human cells. Although most antibodies performed well, more than 25% failed specificity tests by dot blot or western blot. Among specific antibodies, more than 20% failed in chromatin immunoprecipitation experiments. We advise rigorous testing of histone-modification antibodies before use, and we provide a website for posting new test results (http://compbio.med.harvard.edu/antibodies/).

MATERIALS
Product Number
Brand
Product Description

Sigma-Aldrich
Anti-dimethyl-Histone H3 (Lys4) Antibody, Upstate®, from rabbit