How does one decide between generating monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies?
Polyclonal antibodies (2 rabbits for ~$1000) can be generated in about 2 months by sending purified antigen to various companies that specialize in this technology. They will immunize the animals and send you the bleeds as they become available. If you are able to generate 4-5 mg of extremely pure antigen, this may be the best option. It’s fast, relatively inexpensive, and can yield large quantities of high titer polyclonal antisera. Indeed, a good high titer polyclonal antisera can be superior to mAbs in terms of signal intensity because the antibodies recognize multiple epitopes. This is a particularly good option if you need antibodies fast and are not overly concerned with specificity. For example, if you need only to be able to visualize the protein on a Western blot and you know its size, then a polyclonal antisera is ideal. However, the same antisera might be useless for immunofluorescence if it interacts with multiple bands on a Western blot. Click here to see a list of recomme
