Summary
Proteomics is another research field of life science. Researches of protein can reflect the activity of life. Because the structure and function are the direct factors, which affect the features of creatures.
Protein array technology gives a new way to the research of proteomics. And among all technologies in protein array, the antibodies array is the most useful tool.
The theory of protein array
The basic theory of protein array is to fix all kinds of proteins on plates, filters, slides and various carriers to make detecting arrays. And then we can make protein labelled with fluorescent antibiotic substance react with these arrays, and wash off the left substance. With the help of all kinds of technologies, such as, Fluorescence Scanner and confocal laser scanning technology, we can analyze the reaction between proteins by detecting the fluorescence intensity of each point on arrays. So we can detect the function of all proteins.
For this purpose, the first thing is to fix the protein to a proper carrier without changing the natural structure of this protein. And then because of the variety and complication of proteins’ function, so we have to use a high-throughput protein array technology, which is useful in simplifying and speeding up the development of protein function researches.
Array forms
Protein array has two forms. The first one is the antibody arrays, which we have mentioned above. The second one is target protein arrays. Antibody arrays technology is to use antibodies to recongnize proteins or other molecules. And the target protein arrays technology is to use the proteins on arrays to detect the proteins and other molecules, which we want to analyze.
Antibody arrays
Antibody array, as we mentioned above, is the most widely used technology. Antibody arrays have become more and more famous in the development of clinical trails, such as, tumor biomarkers.
The first antibody array was produced by BD Clontech in America. This antibody array is used for researching. There are 378 monoclonal proteins, which are corresponding to proteins that are very important on the cell structure and function.
In this post, we mainly introduce the basic information about protein arrays and some knowledge about antibody array. We hope this is informative for you.