Biochemical Techniques and Instrumentation

Western Blotting Technique

The term "blotting" refers to the transfer of biological samples from a gel to a membrane and their subsequent detection on the surface of the membrane. Western blotting (also called immunoblotting because an antibody is used to specifically detect its antigen) was introduced by Towbin et al. in 1979 and is now a routine technique for protein analysis. The specificity of the antibody-antigen interaction enables a target protein to be identified in the midst of a complex protein mixture. Western blotting can produce qualitative and semi-quantitative data about that protein.