Antibody News

Over the years muscular dystrophies have become a popular area of research. These are a group of inherited disorders that involve an increase in muscle weakness over time. These disorders greatly decrease the quality of life and there are no known cures. Research in this area appears to have excelled in the past two years with findings related to the genes NCoR and EZH2.

The principle behind muscular dystrophies is the degeneration of muscle. During the development of muscle in infancy, muscle satellite cells are continuously proliferating. After infancy, the satellite cells will only proliferate by activation due to an injury. In these disorders, muscle satellite cells do not proliferate in response to muscle loss.  The activity of these cells appears to be controlled by the gene Ezh2. Researchers at...

Clinical depression (also known as major depressive disorder or MDD) affects many people, but the biological processes that cause it (and are influenced by its treatments) are not well understood. Adult neurogenesis is a newly emerging field that could contribute to our knowledge of the etiology of depression and the effects of antidepressants. Nestin antibodies are key tools for this research, as they can be used to identify developing neurons.

Neurogenesis (generation of new neurons) takes place in the adult human brain, although only on a small scale and in certain locations, particularly within a region of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus (DG). The neurogenesis hypothesis of depression posits that adult hippocampal neurogenesis is suppressed by stress, and is implicated in the development of depression (e.g. by increasing susceptibility); and that...

Flow cytometry is one of the powerful tools for the investigators in immunological research involved in studying various immune cells. One of the main advantages of this technique is that is capable of multi-parameter measurements that can be accomplished on a single-cell basis. As a result of the advances in the flow cytometry researchers can now decrypt the phenotypes of several cell subsets in ways that were not possible using traditional assays, such as Western/immunoblotting, microarrays and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. Abundance of reagents and applications has led to a large array of ways in which flow cytometry is being used to screen and employ immunophenotyping assays to identify lymphocyte, monocyte, granulocyte and peripheral blood mononuclear cell subsets to name a few in humans and other model organisms. The choice of antibody cocktails and...

The Myosin superfamily is a large and diverse protein family, and its members are grouped into many classes, are involved in a number of cellular pathways (1). Myosins contain actin- and ATP-binding sites in their conserved catalytic head domain and localize to a number of intracellular compartments and participate in many trafficking and anchoring events. A number of myosin-binding proteins have been discovered, and their identities have often provided information that is essential to the understanding of cellular functions of these motor proteins (2).

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Synaptophysin a Marker Protein in Neuroendocrine Cells Synaptophysin is a major integral membrane glycoprotein of neuronal synaptic vesicles present in virtually all synapses and shows a high degree of evolutionary conservation across the mammals. Synaptophysin has been detected in numerous endocrine cell types and is localized in the membrane of small synaptic-like vesicles. Antibodies directed against synaptophysin are a valuable tool for the immunoblotting and immunohistochemical quantification.

Synaptophysin was detected in perfusion fixed frozen sections of mouse brain (...

The Zonula Occludens (ZO) proteins 1,2 and 3, also known as tight junction proteins, are peripheral proteins localizing at junctional sites(1). ZO proteins are known to be scaffolding proteins recruiting various types of proteins to the cytoplasmic surface of the junction, thereby contributing to the so called “junctional plaque”. ZO proteins also associate with gap junctions by directly interacting with connexins which points towards a general role of ZO proteins in intercellular adhesion and communication as determined using anti-ZO1 antibodies (2).

Ubiquitin is an abundant and essential cellular 9-kd protein that is conserved across evolution from yeast to humans. Ubiquitin is used by cells as a covalent modifier of other proteins both to activate their function and to target them for degradation, depending on the degree of ubiquitination. The ubiquitin-proteasome pathway (UPP) is comprised of ubiquitin, a three-enzyme ubiquitination complex, the intracellular protein ubiquitination targets, and the proteasome that is the organelle for protein degradation (1).

Platelet endothelial cell adhesion molecule PECAM1 (also called CD31) is a 130 kDa type I transmembrane glycoprotein that is expressed on most cells of the hematopoietic lineage including platelets, monocytes, neutrophils and certain lymphocyte subsets (1). It has also been suggested that PECAM-1 contributes to endothelial cell barrier function. However, a number of studies have since shown that the stability of endothelial cell junctions is more easily compromised in the blood vessels of PECAM-1-deficient mice subjected to physiological stress.

IHC analysis of PECAM1 in rat brain cryosection...

Nucleolin is a ubiquitous, nonhistone nucleolar phosphoprotein of exponentially growing eukaryotic cells and is present in abundance at the dense fibrillar and granular regions of nucleolus. Intact nucleolin is the major species and represents 5% of nucleolar protein in actively dividing cells. In non-dividing cells, degraded forms of various molecular sizes are predominantly expressed due to autodegradation (1).  Nucleolin has been shown to be expressed on the cell surface where it serves as a binding protein for variety of ligands implicated in various cellular processes and the synthesis of nucleolin has been shown to be positively correlated with increased rates of cell division.

Nanog, a homeodomain (HD) transcription factor, plays a critical role in the maintenance of embryonic stem (ES) cell self-renewal. Transcription regulator involved in inner cell mass and ES cell proliferation and self-renewal. Imposes pluripotency on ES cells and prevents their differentiation towards extra embryonic endoderm and trophectoderm lineages (1).  Blocks bone morphogenetic protein-induced mesoderm differentiation of ES cells by physically interacting with SMAD1 and interfering with the recruitment of co-activators to the active SMAD transcriptional complexes. Nanog also acts as a transcriptional activator or repressor and is expressed in testicular carcinoma and derived germ cell tumors (at protein level). Nanog has been...

Vimentin, a member of the intermediate filament (IF) family, is a protein responsible for maintaining cellular integrity and reducing damage caused by stress. The vimentin protein is ubiquitously expressed in normal mesenchymal cells, and recent research has observed a relationship in the increased level of vimentin expression and the proliferation of various epithelial, prostate, gastrointestinal, central nervous system (CNS), breast, malignant melanoma, and lung cancers (1). It is vimentin’s up-regulation in the nucleus, during epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), which has been linked to a number of tumorigenic events (1, 2, 5).

Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) is a serine/threonine protein kinase and has been known to play its role in cell growth and proliferation. mTOR is activated by phosphorylationin response to growth factors, mitogens and hormones. Rapamycin is a macrolide antibiotic from Streptomyces hygroscopicus that specifically inhibit the activity of mTOR. The function and regulatory pathway of mTOR has been extensively investigated and is gaining more broad attention in several human diseases, including cancer, obesity, type-2 diabetes, and neurodegeneration(1).
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