FAQ

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What anti­gens are present on the array? Is my pro­tein of interest on the array?

Our arrays con­tain more than 15,000 dif­fer­ent human anti­gens with an unique pro­teo­me cov­er­age, like full-length pro­teins, pro­tein iso­forms, pep­tides and neoanti­gens & frameshift pep­tides.
To explore dif­fer­ent pro­tein classes, tis­sue expres­sions or dis­ease involve­ment please check our array con­tent page.
To check if your pro­tein of interest is expressed on the array, please down­load the com­plete gene find­er file (xlsx, 19.3 MB), our data­base of all genes that are present on our hEXse­lect or Uni­PEx array.

We dis­crim­in­ate the intens­ity of detec­ted hits between weak (1), medi­um (2) and strong (3). This spot intens­ity depends on the con­cen­tra­tion of the anti­body, but also on its affin­ity and the anti­gen con­cen­tra­tion & present­a­tion. There­fore, the hit intens­ity gives an indic­a­tion of the quant­ity, but not exclus­ively, and there­fore the res­ults are to be assessed as qual­it­at­ive.
To get an impres­sion of res­ults achieved with our arrays, have a look at our present­a­tion of example res­ults for bio­mark­er dis­cov­ery

  1. Send us your sample (e. g. 50 µl ser­um). We set up the ana­lys­is accord­ing to your needs.
  2. We ana­lyse your sample in-house. Our pro­tein arrays based on E. coli clones spot­ted onto PVDF mem­brane express recom­bin­ant human pro­teins.
  3. Receive your eval­u­ated res­ults: ana­lys­is of inter­ac­tions, anti­gen iden­ti­fic­a­tion, sci­entif­ic report, raw data. Dis­cuss res­ults with our experts, if desired.
  4. Val­id­ate your most prom­ising can­did­ates with our cus­tom­ized subar­rays or receive inform­a­tion for fol­low-up research or trans­la­tion into a clin­ic­al or dia­gnost­ic approach.

Full ser­vice pack­age: 1,100 € per pro­tein array (hEXse­lect or Uni­PEx array) + 560 € screen­ing ser­vice per array + 1,000 € per order for res­ult com­pil­a­tion.
Ask us for an indi­vidu­al offer, in which we can also con­sider a bulk dis­count.

It is tech­nic­ally not pos­sible to ensure that all pro­teins are fol­ded cor­rectly. To present the expressed pro­teins on our array, the E. coli clones grow­ing dir­ectly on the PVDF mem­brane are lysed under dena­tur­ing con­di­tions. These are then changed to nat­ive con­di­tions. Also, incub­a­tion con­di­tions dur­ing the exper­i­ments are nat­ive. There­fore, it can be assumed that some pro­teins & pep­tides refold in parts or in their entirety in their nat­ive form, while oth­ers may remain in the dena­tured state.

To pro­duce engine pro­tein arrays, E. coli expres­sion clones are spot­ted onto a PVDF mem­brane, using our spot­ting robot Baloo. E. coli colon­ies grow and express the cloned human pro­teins dir­ectly on the mem­brane. After a defined time of pro­tein expres­sion, the arrays are pro­cessed E. coli lys­is and fix­a­tion of pro­teins on the mem­brane and after dehyd­ra­tion, arrays are ready to use.

Watch the pro­ced­ure of spot­ting in the video.

We use E. coli clones with empty vec­tors, spot­ted on the PVDF mem­brane, as con­trols for unspe­cif­ic bind­ings. An inter­ac­tion (e.g. ser­um anti­body binds to anti­gen) is con­sidered pos­it­ive (hit), if the sig­nal-intens­it­ies of the clones in duplic­ate are clearly high­er than the sig­nal from the blank and empty vec­tor con­trols. In this way, we can ensure that no non-spe­cif­ic bind­ing activ­it­ies are eval­u­ated as false pos­it­ives.

Samples can be pooled if desired. How­ever, it should be con­sidered that sample com­pon­ents of the indi­vidu­al samples may influ­ence each oth­er and the reac­tion with the anti­gen may be reduced. To achieve the best pos­sible sens­it­iv­ity, we there­fore recom­mend single sample test­ing. If a sample pool is still desired, we offer pre-screen­ing of the samples for poten­tial pool­ing.

Yes, we offer dif­fer­ent cus­tom­iz­a­tion of pro­tein arrays. If your pro­tein of interest is not present on the array, we offer dif­fer­ent pos­sib­il­it­ies to spot your pro­tein to the array as an addi­tion­al ser­vice. If you need smal­ler arrays with few­er anti­gens for fol­low-up exper­i­ments to val­id­ate your bio­mark­er can­did­ates, we offer the man­u­fac­tur­ing of subar­rays with a size range from 500 up to 13,000 clones in duplic­ates.
Please con­tact us for fur­ther inform­a­tion on how we could sup­port your pro­ject idea with cus­tom­ized pro­tein arrays, prices can be dis­cussed upon request.

You can determ­ine e. g. auto-anti­body pro­files of com­plex sera, cross-react­iv­ity of anti­bod­ies (mono­clonal, poly­clonal, sec­ond­ary) and pro­tein-pro­tein inter­ac­tion pairs. Pro­tein arrays are ideal for neuro­bi­o­logy, SARS-CoV­‑2, can­cer and autoim­mune dis­eases, and many oth­er fields of bio­mark­er research.
Check if there are already a case stud­ies of your research area in our pub­lic­a­tion data­base.

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