SIDEBAR: Selected Suppliers of Immunoassays and Assay Systems Immunoassays combine principles of immunology and chemistry into tests that are used by scientists in practically every discipline, including fields as diverse as molecular biology and environmental science. In research applications, immunoassays such as immunoblotting (detecting membrane-bound proteins), immunohistochemistry (cell or tissue staining), and enzyme immunoassays provide a sensitive and specific means of detecting targe

Date: July 5, 1999Table of Cell Signaling Tools At today's research pace, new signaling mechanisms within and between cells are emerging not one by one but in a chain reaction. Each new discovery has strong implications for previously established models, sometimes overturning several assumptions at once. With such a large number of interacting systems--from cell adhesion to differentiation and apoptosis--and receptor pathways, keeping up with the wealth of cell-signaling research tools can be l

For many years, geneticists determined the genetic makeup of organisms by examining the physical characteristics of their offspring. But with the discovery of the structure of the DNA double helix, first published by James D. Watson and Francis H.C. Crick in 1953 (Nature, 171:964-7), the science of genetics was forever changed. Scientists soon developed techniques to study the genetic message found in all living cells at the molecular level. One of most important of these methods was the use of

if (n == null) The Scientist - The Immune Response The Scientist 9[18]:18, Sep. 18, 1995 Tools The Immune Response By Holly Ahern Imagine that you've just cloned a gene for a bacterial enzyme with unique structural properties and you want to find out more about it. What natural role does the enzyme play, you wonder, and do organisms other than bacteria produce it? To answer these questions, you could screen countless genomic libraries for clones bearing si

Date: February 2, 1998 Chart 1 Chart 2 Prokaryotic expression systems, reviewed in the September 1, 1997, issue of The Scientist were part of the early repertoire of research tools in molecular biology. Although the expression of recombinant protein in prokaryotes provided a means to develop other research tools (antibodies, for example ) and study basic aspects of biological function, the scope and depth of this research were limited, especially with regard to eukaryotic proteins. The de novo

Antibody Purification Reagents The immune response is often exploited to produce those remarkably useful affinity reagents known as antibodies. Today's biological and biomedical laboratories employ an array of different immunochemical techniques. For example, a specific antibody can be harnessed to screen for the presence of its respective antigen, quantify the amount of antigen in a given sample, determine the antigen's subcellular location, isolate the antigen from complex mixtures, and sear

"Lots of companies come out with media or reagents for this or that, and make a big splash, but they're all basically derivatives of traditional products," says Hayden Coon, a former National Institutes of Health re-searcher who is the founder of Human Cell Therapies Inc. of Chebeague Island, Maine. Advanced Biotechnologies Inc. Columbia, MD American Qualex Antibodies La Mirada, CA American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) Rockv

"Lots of companies come out with media or reagents for this or that, and make a big splash, but they're all basically derivatives of traditional products," says Hayden Coon, a former National Institutes of Health re-searcher who is the founder of Human Cell Therapies Inc. of Chebeague Island, Maine. Advanced Biotechnologies Inc. Columbia, MD American Qualex Antibodies La Mirada, CA American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) Rockv