Advice wanted on Western Blotting materials - (May/04/2006 )

Hello...

I am just after a bit of advice as to where I can source some pre-cut membranes and filter papers for Western Blotting with the NuPAGE X-cell surelock module. Strangely, Invitrogen who market the module in the UK do not stock any such materials apart from the transfer buffer.

Any help greatly appreciated.

And I thought buying pre-cast gels was lazy!!!

I buy all the NuPAGE stuff as it saves so much time but buying pre-cut membranes is just taking the biscuit. It takes about 2 minutes. Do it whilst you are running your gel.

Better still, work out the dimension you need using a ruler and a sealed gel, then cut your filter paper and membranes up using a guillotine. You can make 50 of each and then you don't need to worry. I reckon that would take a max of ten minutes.

I bought a roller of nitrocellulose membrane, took a ruler and a pen and labeled the membrane to cut just the right size. Hopefully I didn't cut the whole roller immediately, because few days later I needed round nitrocellulose membrane, that I could cut from my roller.
You will save a lot of money by buying a roller instead of pre-cut membranes (that never have the right size actually.)

Well, Whatman 3MM paper is the best paper IMHO. You can buy it in really large sheets (about 75 cm by 40 cm) in packs of 100. It's about £80 a box last time I checked but that was academic prices. If your only use is in Western blotting then you won't need to buy more ever again.

For membranes it depends on your application. My preference is Millipore's Immobilon range. I use Immobilon-FL because I specifically need low-fluorescence material - but they do others. This is about £190 for a huge roll. More than a single person could ever need.

schleicher and schuell also manufactures and sells blotting papers and membranes of various types. i find them to be more than adequate for wb.