Rabbit monoclonal antibodies
What are rabbit monoclonals?
Rabbit monoclonal antibodies represent a significant advancement in the field of immunodetection, compared to the traditional method of generating monoclonal antibodies in mice. The immune response of rabbits typically produces more diverse antibodies than mice. This means that there is a higher probability of generating a high affinity and highly specific rabbit monoclonal antibody that can be used across a wide range of applications.
Rabbit monoclonals are generated in the same way as mouse monoclonal antibodies. An animal is immunized with an antigen from the protein of interest, followed either by the fusion of B cells from the animal with a fusion partner cell line to generate an immortalized hybridoma cell line, or by B cell cloning. Individual antibody clones are then screened to identify the best performing antibody. For both fusion partner and B cell cloning methods, the antibody producing gene is typically sequenced and the antibody manufactured using recombinant methods.
Over the past 20 years, Abcam has developed and screened tens of thousands of rabbit monoclonal antibody clones, taking the best of those forward for extensive validation in biological samples in western blot, immunohistochemistry, cell staining, IP and ChIP, flow cytometry and ELISA.
Why are rabbit monoclonals often preferred over mouse monoclonals and rabbit polyclonals?
Reproducibility
Like with mouse monoclonals, one major advantage of rabbit monoclonals is that the antibody is produced from one specific clone, ie all of the antibody molecules that make up a given monoclonal are identical. That antibody molecule stays the same no matter how many batches or lots of the antibody are produced.
In comparison, polyclonal antibodies are composed of a mixture of antibodies. Due to variations in the immune system between different animals and differences in the immune response over time, the mixture of individual antibodies making up the polyclonal antibody may vary between production batches or lots.
The consistency of rabbit monoclonal antibodies means that you can be confident that the identical antibody is always being used, with the same performance, both when replicating research in scientific publications and within your own research over time.
Enhanced specificity and sensitivity
- Diverse repertoire: Rabbits possess an immune system capable of generating antibodies with higher diversity and affinity. This feature translates into antibodies that can recognize epitopes that might be inaccessible to mouse monoclonal antibodies.
- Stronger binding: Due to their high affinity, rabbit monoclonal antibodies provide stronger and more stable binding to target antigens, which is critical for high-sensitivity applications.
Together, this means that rabbit monoclonal antibodies, when carefully screened and validated, are more likely to be specific for the protein of interest and to be able to be used in a wide variety of applications.
What are rabbit monoclonals used for?
Rabbit monoclonal antibodies are used extensively in biological research; over 115,000 scientific publications have used Abcam’s rabbit monoclonal antibodies. They are used in research across the scope of biology from cancer research to neuroscience and more; and from basic research through to drug development.