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What are polyclonal antibodies?

A Monoclonal antibody, by contrast, comes from a single antibody producing B cell and therefore only binds with one unique epitope. Each individual antibody in a polyclonal mixture is technically a monoclonal antibody; however, this term generally refers to a process by which the actual B-cell is isolated and fused to an immortal hybridoma cell line so that large quantities of identical antibody can be generated.

Monoclonal antibodies vs Polyclonal antibodies

How to choose an antibody for your research? Monoclonal antibodies or polyconal antibodies, that is a problem. You need to consider their characteristics and your experiment requirements before making the decision.

The following are the advantages and disadvantages of monoclonal antibodies when they are compared with polyclonal antibodies.

Advantages:

• Monoclonal antibodies have a high degree of homogeneity from batch to batch, which means that if experimental conditions are kept constant, results from monoclonal antibodies can be very reproducible between experiments and batches.
• Monoclonal antibodies specifically detect a particular epitope on the antigen, and reduce probability of cross reactivity with other protein.
• Monoclonal antibodies are more suitable for experiments requiring quantification of the protein levels.

Disadvantages:

• Monoclonal antibodies production is significantly more expensive and requires more time to produce and develop the hybridized clone.
• Small changes in the epitope's structure often render the monoclonal antibody unable to detect the target protein and share across a range of species, limiting their flexibility.
• Monoclonal antibodies are more sensitive to changes in experimental conditions (ie pH and buffer composition) than polyclonal antibodies.
• Monoclonal antibodies are more vulnerable to the loss of epitope through chemical treatment of the antigen than polyclonal antibodies (this can be offset by pooling two or more monoclonal antibodies to the same antigen), - epitope changes can greatly impact binding.
• Cell culture and purification capabilities are required in the process of production.
• Monoclonal antibodies are less suitable for detecting denatured proteins than polyclonal antibodies or for use in assays that require antigen cross-linking.

Citations

PD-L1 Monoclonal Antibody referenced in "Expression of STAT1 is positively correlated with PD-L1 in human ovarian cancer". Journal Cancer Biology & Therapy, 2020

BAX Monoclonal Antibody referenced in "2, 5-Hexanedione induced apoptosis in rat spinal cord neurons and VSC4. 1 cells via the proNGF/p75NTR and JNK pathways". Bioscience Reports, 2021

TP53 Monoclonal Antibody referenced in "Stable thin films of human P53 antigen on gold surface for the detection of tumour associated anti-P53 autoantibodies". Electrochimica Acta, 2019

GST Monoclonal Antibody referenced in "Enhancient of the stability of Mycobacterium tuberculosis recombinant antigen expressed in Escherichia coli using cell lysis additives". Protein Expression and Purification, 2019

COL3A1 Monoclonal Antibody referenced in "Effects of photobiomodulation therapy on the extracellular matrix of human dental pulp cell sheets". Journal of Photochiistry and Photobiology B: Biology, 2019

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