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Is There an Advantage to Using a Synthetic Peptide to Manufacture My Antibody?
The use of a synthetic peptide to manufacture a polyclonal antibody has numerous advantages versus using a protein(s). First, synthetic peptides are relatively inexpensive to obtain in highly purified form. Second, one or more specific epitopes can be targeted using synthetic peptides, enabling to production of epitope-specific (or limited) antibodies if the resultant antibodies are then affinity purified using the target peptide. Third, antibodies can be made to several regions of the same protein, enabling construction of a specific assay to quantify the amount of the protein present. Finally, one large advantage to using synthetic peptides as immunogens is that modified regions of the protein, most notably regions containing phosphorylated amino acids, can be manufactured, leading to the production of phosphorylation state-specific antibodies, also known as phosphospecific antibodies. The utility of such reagents and the production of such antibodies has allowed for the detailed study of numerous cell signaling pathways as well as the elucidation of their regulation. In order to manufacture a synthetic peptide, however, the sequence must be known. Such a limitation is becoming less problematic given the large numbers of proteins whose sequences are available through public databases. Phosphospecific antibodies, phosphopeptides, cell-permeable phosphopeptides, and other products and services for the study of phosphorylation are avilable through our PhosphoExplorationTM Program.
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