DMMC Course: TECHNIQUES & STRATEGIES IN MOLECULAR MEDICINE

0930-1015 Thursday 13 December 2007, Panoz institute, LTEE2, TCD

Immunodetection methods on cell and tissue extracts
Dr Leonie Young (UCD Conway Institute of Biomolecular & Biomedical Research)

The use of antibodies to detect and characterise proteins has been well established. With the development of high through-put techniques such as tissue microarrays (TMA), a real challenge now exists to determine the cellular location, level of expression and the function of these identified proteins. In this lecture, principles fundamental to immunodetection will be outlined. Common pitfalls and measures to avoid these will be discussed. Applications of immunodetection in a modern molecular context will be illustrated, including: western blotting, ELISA, immunohistochemistry/ immunofluorescence, tissue microarrays, co-immunprecipitation, Electromobility shift assays, chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) and antibody arrays.