Stain-Free Technology

Extracting proteins from tissue lysates for western blotting can be a challenge. From knowing how to process your tissue to verifying protein loading to including suitable controls, there is a lot to keep track of. The ten tips in this article can help you on your way to generating reproducible and reliable blots and do better western blotting overall.

What is stain-free technology? How does it work in electrophoresis and western blotting? How does it compare with existing staining techniques? What are its advantages and possible concerns? Here is a technical review of this rapidly growing technological advance.

Hand casting polyacrylamide gels is not an easy task. It is laborious, needs lot of pre-planning and is cumbersome. Bio-Rad’s new TGX and TGX Stain-Free FastCast gel solutions not only address all these issues, but provide added benefits, such as increased speed, stain-free visualization, and quality control. Learn more about these new handcasting kits.

Twenty years after the discovery of the link between BRCA gene mutations and breast cancer, researcher Ryan Jensen of the Yale Medical School is looking into the interactions between the DNA repair protein RAD51 and BRCA proteins using Bio-Rad’s V3 Western Workflow.

When Dr. Fred Bauzon started his research, he worked with bioinformatics specialists to functionalize suitable gene candidates based on their expression levels with HMGCR transcript levels. All his experiments demonstrated a reduction in low-density lipoprotein receptor protein (LDLR) and candidate gene protein levels after the candidate gene was silenced. Here Bauzon discusses how TGX Stain-free precast gels have aided his research toward future drug targets for the therapeutic control of LDL uptake.

Although the Western blot is a core lab procedure, surprisingly little has changed in traditional bench work practice since its inception in 1979. The V3 Western Workflow delivers a streamlined solution to the conventional western blotting workflow as explored here by one protein researcher specializing in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

The ChemiDoc MP imaging system enables stain-free operation and lets you visualize proteins at every stage of your experiment. Its flexibility and sensitivity are complemented by a simple, intuitive operation that integrates seamlessly into your workflow.

The Gel Doc™ EZ imaging system makes an impact from coast to coast — at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University in Boston, and in the Geoff Rosenfeld Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego.

When it comes to gel imaging and blotting, conventional imaging devices have tended to offer either high-performance, complex functionality or low-cost, low-performance simplicity. That is, until now.