Rat monoclonal antibodies

What are rat monoclonal antibodies used for?

Rat monoclonal antibodies provide a useful complement to the more commonly used mouse monoclonal and rabbit monoclonal antibodies.

Rats have often been used to generate antibodies for use with mouse samples, where immunotolerance means that the mouse immune system is unlikely to generate good antibodies against mouse proteins.

Rat monoclonals are also useful in multicolor immunostaining or other methods where multiple antibodies are used together with secondary antibodies. For example, by combining a mouse monoclonal, rat monoclonal and chicken polyclonal antibody, it is possible to stain three different proteins at the same time using secondary antibodies specific for those species that are conjugated to different fluorescent dyes.

Abcam supplies a number of classic rat monoclonal clones that have been used for decades in life science research. These include the anti-BrdU antibody clone BU1/75 (ICR1) and the F4/80 macrophage marker clone CI:A3-1.

We have also converted a number of our popular rabbit monoclonal antibodies to a rat backbone to change them to rat monoclonal antibodies. These include our Iba1 clone EPR16589  and our NeuN clone EPR12763.