What are the most important antibody targets for immunocytochemistry?
New to our series of blogs on antibody research applications, today we are exploring the top targets for ICC, or immunocytochemistry.
ICC is the staining and microscopic examination of cells, which are often grown in culture. This is not to be confused with immunohistochemistry (IHC), which involves the staining of tissues with their normal organisation and extracellular matrix intact – although we have covered that here!
This blog follows on from our previous application focused blogs over the last few months – we have covered ChIP, flow cytometry, and Western blotting.
Dr Andrew Chalmers, founder of CiteAb, said: “To produce this ICC data set, our analysis looked at specific antibody citations that were carried out using ICC and worked out what the most commonly used protein targets for the antibodies were. This identified over 3000 protein targets for antibodies that are used in ICC.
“Our old friend GFP is in pole position. This fluorescent protein is commonly used as a protein tag and cellular marker for cellular experiments, so it is really of no surprise to find it in our top ten.”
It is worth noting that GFP was also top for IHC and in the top ten targets for ChIP and Western Blotting. It wasn’t, however, for flow cytometry.
Dr Chalmers adds: “In second place we have histone H2AX, a variant histone protein which is required for and modified in response to DNA damage.”
Antibodies against modified forms of this protein are commonly used in ICC as a marker for DNA damage and in studies on mechanisms of DNA damage repair. This is a really important area in cell science, explaining why this histone features so highly.
Further targets that feature in the top ten are tubulin and actin. Antibodies against these cytoskeletal proteins are commonly used to stain cells for a huge range of experiments, especially investigating dividing and migrating cells.
How about the rest of the top ten? Which targets would you expect to feature? You can sign up below to view the top ten for free, or contact us for a quote to receive the full data set for ICC.
– David and the CiteAb team
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