Protein Blotting Guide

Protein blotting, the transfer of proteins to solid-phase membrane supports, is a powerful and popular technique for the visualization and identification of proteins. When bound to membranes, proteins are readily accessible for immunological or biochemical analyses, quantitative stating, or demonstration of protein-protein or protein-ligand interactions. This chapter provides an overview of the methods and workflow of protein blotting, which involves two phases: transfer and detection.

Click Here For More Information on Western Blotting

The first phase of protein blotting is the transfer step, which involves moving the proteins from a solution or gel and immobilizing them on a synthetic membrane support (blot). Proteins can be transferred to membranes using a number of methods but the most common are electrophoretic transfer and microfiltration (dot blotting). Though diffusion or capillary blotting methods may also be used to transfer proteins from gels, generally electrophoretic transfer is used to transfer proteins following electrophoretic separation by native or SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and microfiltration is used to transfer protein that are in solution.