Many of you are well on your way through graduate school, itching to earn that precious PhD, while some are just starting out, getting ready to take your first midterms while preparing to choose your first research rotations. Regardless of where you are in your career, or even if you've already earned that doctorate and are on your way to a postdoc and beyond, ABclonal's blog series has put together some articles that can help you get through the day. Whether it is experimental troubleshooting or just trying to get along with your lab mates and PhD supervisor, here is a collection of previous blogs that should be of use to you. 

ABclonal has developed over 12,000 high quality antibody products since its inception in 2011. With this significant and time-tested experience, you can rest assured that ABclonal is relentless in its focus on the production and development of quality antibodies. Let’s further our understanding of antibodies by taking a more in-depth look at their structure, function, and uses in research.

Do you find yourself using a lot of SDS-PAGE gels for Western blotting and Coomassie staining? Or have your pre-cast gels been stored for too long and expired? Why not try to cast your own SDS-PAGE gels to save some budget for the lab, and produce just as valid of results. Today, we would like to share five tips for hand-casting SDS-PAGE gels, as well as the protocol and formulation to do so.

Autophagy is a natural mechanism in which the cell removes and degrades cellular components with autolysosomes. It is a popular research area because autophagy is related to many physical and pathological processes. The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology is granted to Yoshinori Ohsumi for his contribution in autophagy. In autophagy studies, LC3-I and LC3-II detection is a must-have experiment to track the autophagy process. Therefore, we would like to share five important notes for quantifying autophagy with LC3.

Western blot results can either be the highlight of the day, or a scientist's worst nightmare. Unfortunately, it usually turns out to be the latter of the two. After a long hard day of work, nothing can ruin the day more than seeing your western blot results come out blotchy and unreadable. Luckily, there are many ways to prevent and fix a messy blot to ensure you get the best results possible, rather than ending up with something horrific like the image below. To avoid these situations, I have outlined some tips to keep in mind before going through with your western blot test.