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comment by thundara
thundara  ·  3216 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: February 10, 2016

    Seems like biology 101, but the frequency with which it happens is astounding

Yeah, considering how ubiquitous antibody-based conclusions are in biology, I'm surprised there's not a more thorough creation and validation process. I straight up do not trust polyclonal antibodies (it's not a defined reagent!) and vendors have almost zero standards for showing specificity.

I'm looking at ~20 targets to validate, and even if I could find antibodies for them all (many do not have mouse-specific versions), the process of formally checking antibody would be close to half a year of work.

If I have my way though, "Mass Spec" will be Aim 1 of my thesis proposal, "Staining and Validation" will be Aim 2, "Drugging" will be Aim 3, and "Cell Culture Follow-up" will maybe be Aim 4. I'm hoping the results are exciting enough that doing the first two and doing them well will be sufficient for my (hypothetical) committee.