Hello,

It depends on the target protein that you are identifying. Monoclonal antibody is preferred because it is more specific and gives consistent results.

I do not agree with the statement that polyclonal antibodies are not acceptable for publication.

The advantage of using polyclonal antibody is that it binds to multiple epitopes on the same antigen. So several molecules in principle can bind to each antigen there by enhancing the signal. Moreover, it identifies the entire target protein by binding to multiple sites since multiple epitopes are targeted. Therefore there is a high likelihood of detecting the target protein. Though polyclonal antibody has certain disadvantages like higher background and cross reactivity as detecting multiple epitopes could be shared by related proteins.

I would suggest you go for polyclonal antibody initially since you need to check the expression of transcription factors. If need be you can use monoclonal antibody at a later stage if you are asked to do so at the time of publication.

I hope this is helpful.

Best.

With primaries, you really just need to try multiple in order to see which is cleanest for your assay. In general, monoclonals are cleaner; however, I have a few polyclonal antibodies (iba-1, for activated microglia, for instance) which have beautiful crisp results with no background. If you have both mono- and poly- clonal antibodies against the same protein, run a test using them both on the same tissue from one subject. You should be able to tell easily which provides cleaner results.

Thanks Alot Gail Stonebarger and Malcolm Nobre for your brief comments. I got the idea.

Appreciate your suggestions