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This author interview is by Dr Michael G. Weller, Head of Division 1.5 Protein Analysis at Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM). BAM (www.bam.de/en) is a senior scientific and technical institute with responsibility to the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Dr Weller's review paper, Quality issues of research antibodies is available for download in Analytical Chemistry Insights.
Deficiencies in research antibody quality lead to economic losses up to several billions of Euros annually. Poorly documented antibody experiments lead to a flood of publications without any chance to be reproduced and without any scientific value.The dominance of antibody specifications in complex analytical procedures is often highly underestimated. Most journals and funding agencies lack the expertise to identify major flaws in antibody experiments and their documentation. Most companies sell insufficiently characterized and documented antibodies. Recombinant antibodies are not the solution for antibody validation.
Immunoassays are analytical methods used to track both clinical and environmental parameters. Antibodies or other proteins with similar recognizing activity, are employed, often immobilized onto a modified surface. Addressable microarrays are based on single-stranded DNA oligonucleotides which are normally used to detect aptamers or relevant gene sequences. The use of antibody-oligonucleotide conjugates allows non-directed antibody immobilization from an immunoassay to be converted into DNA hybridization events on the array. Consequently, the diagnostics platform is multiplexed and addressable. Figure 1 is a model representation of the whole biosensor construct. In brief, a surface is coated with streptavidin, and decorated with biotin-modified oligonucleotides of a controlled size and known sequence. These oligonucleotides on the surface also contain a furan motif, which upon irradiation and in the presence of a photosensitizer, is oxidized via single oxygen to a reactive intermediate which crosslinks the immediate opposing base when hybridized with its complementary strand [1].
Antibody-oligonucleotides conjugates still display several concerns due to their heterogeneicity, difficulty of characterization and high price [2]. The being the case, we aim at developing stable, robust, reproducible and well characterized quimeras for the application on te above described immunoarray. Mild chemical conditions are crucial for the antibody stability, therefore bivalent crosslinkers have been employed [2]. Even though the use of these bilinkers is standard for other substrate conjugation (i.e., enzymes, drug payloads, etc.), there is no literature available on the conjugation of small oligonucleotides (< 30 mer) to antibodies using this method. Several protein-nucleic acid conjugates have been therefore developed, and successfully characterized using MALDI-ToF and gel electrophoresis techniques.