US AIR FORCE, STAFF SGT ARACELI ALARCON
The polyclonal antibodies used to detect the “exercise hormone” irisin in commercial ELISA kits are nonspecific and give false positive results, thereby negating much of the research into the hormone’s function over the last three years, according to a study published this week (March 9) in Scientific Reports. (See “Validating Antibodies: An Urgent Need,” The Scientist, December 2014.)
First announced in a 2012 Nature paper, irisin was identified as the cleaved glycosylated tail of the membrane-bound muscle protein FNDC5, which is thought to travel through the blood and convert white fat cells into calorie-burning brown fat. More than 80 studies that followed up on this finding and its implications for diabetes and obesity used commercial ELISA kits based on three antibodies to identify the protein. ...
