conjugated antibodies

By Emily Cartwright, PhD

By Hunter Martinez

Flow cytometry was developed to label and examine single cells with high throughput capacity using antibodies conjugated to fluorophores. The basic concept of flow cytometry is that a cell suspension is delivered as a single stream and is passed through a light source that uses detectors to generate data sets based off cellular properties. More specifically, the light emitted by fluorescently conjugated antibodies is channeled through selected filters to sort based off preset parameters or targets used.

Conjugated antibodies are essential research tools for countless cell and molecular assays. While much of the time a researcher’s needs can be met with the wide variety of commercially available antibody conjugates, some applications may call for a unique reagent. For this reason some scientists opt for the flexibility of conjugating their own antibodies.

Fluorescent probes conjugated to antibodies allow for simultaneous IHC detection of multiple antigens in the same tissue section. However, quite often conventional multi-color IHC cannot be done if only primary antibodies raised in the same host species are available to the researcher. To solve this problem, we developed a novel technique for performing multicolor fluorescence immunohistochemistry using primary antibodies derived from a single host source.

Conjugated antibodies are a useful research tool in a variety of applications, ranging from Western blot to flow cytometry. We at Novus Biologicals offer many primary antibodies conjugated to enzymes such as HRP, fluorochromes such as FITC, and others including biotin and cyanine dyes.