Phosphorylated histone antibodies – immunoprecipitation goes into the fast lane

August 20th, 2011 |

We at Novus Biologicals specialize in highly specific, ChIP-validated antibodies for researchers working in epigenetics. Our antibody catalog has a variety of useful products for the epigeneticist, including the new Pathway Assay Kits and Epi-PlusTM range of modified histone antibodies. As the most well validated epigenetics antibodies available today, they are the perfect partner to the automated PrecipitorTM Immunoprecipitation and Purification system, which we also stock.

Post-translational histone modification is central to the study of epigenetics. The histones forming the octomeric core of the nucleosome can undergo a number of different modifications, at a variety of sites on the tail domain, each modification having a unique effect. For example, H3 phosphorylation at the Ser10 position is associated with chromosome condensation during cell division, and also the induction of c-fos, c-myc and other immediate-early genes. Antibody research has shown PKA, Rsk-2 and Msk-1 are necessary for phosphorylation to take place at this site, modulated by mitogenic activation of the ERK and p38 MAP Kinase pathway.

Phosphorylation is not restricted to the histones, as radiolabeling has revealed that around 30% of the proteins in our antibody catalog can undergo post-translational phosphorylation. Integral to the process are protein kinases. A common factor in signaling networks, they influence many downstream pathways. Their role is to take phosphate groups from ATP, transferring them to threonine, tyrosine or serine residues on protein peptide substrates. This post translational modification process allows proteins to regulate a large number of different cellular activities.

Phosphospecific antibodies are used in many areas of cell research, including metabolism, differentiation, neuronal signaling, apoptosis and the cell cycle. Anomalous phosphorylation events are implicated in many human diseases, including cancer. There are a number of antibody assays which allow researchers to study phosphorylated proteins and their associated kinases, including ELISA, Western blot, ChIP and immunoprecipitation (IP).

A growing number of researchers have turned to the PrecipitorTM High Throughput IP system to analyze samples in less time and with minimal effort. Able to handle 16 different antibody assays with ease, it offers a speedy automated solution to epigeneticists working at the cutting edge of histone modification research.