...the best antibodies? - (Nov/02/2005 )

Which antibodies, among those commercially available, are "the best" (so to speak, it is not usual having problems with them) in your opinion?

Those from Calbiochem, Rockland, Sigma, Chemicon, SantaCruz...?
Which do you recommend? I'm comparing conjugated antibodies for immunostaining and I don't know how to choose.

I'm not sure which specific Abs you want, but you may check various references.
In our lab, we use conj. Abs from Southern Biothech and they work fine.

Its not fair to say that antibodies from particular companies are not good. It depends on what antibody u r looking for.
Best thing...look at the literature and see how their blot looks for the protein you are interested in. Go the materials and methods section and u will have the info on the antibody.

Unlike many people here I havn't had problems with SantaCruz, but I've only used four abs from them. I had a problem with the only BDBiosciences ab I have ever used, but when I switched to looking at my blots using X-ray film rather than a gel doc system I had no more problems.
Ab-Cam seem to be pretty good, but I havn't tested them out fully yet.

Rosie

Sorry if people don't appreciate my comments about Santa Cruz. Several people I know have found out the hard way that the antibody that is supposely their protein of interest is in fact not. Santa cruz does not go (at least they didn't as of when I checked) and HPLC and secquence their antibodies to make sure they were for the correct proteins, instead they just make sure it is at the right size. Hence my lab and others stay away from santa cruz if we can.

I would like to add my vote for calbiochem and cell signalling

we have bought some from santa cruz over the past couple years; a few have not worked; but sometimes they have been the only vendor with our antibody of choice

To be honest I have had duds from all companies listed and I have had brilliant antibodies from all companies listed. it all depends on the antigen not the company, also you will find alot of these companies actually have the same clones that the other companies offer and therefore should be just as effective.

In terms of customer support I have had excellent technical advice from Santa Cruz and Calbiochem, not to say that the others wouldn´t also supply advice but I haven´t tried.

In short depends on your target not the company.

I agree totally with Pria, go to the literature and see what other people are using and then follow at least you know then that it works independant of the company that sells it.

Scott