The blocking peptide is the antigen we use for immunization during antibody generation so that we can create an antigen-specific antibody. You can use this blocking peptide as a negative control alongside other controls in an immunoassay to give some insight into antibody specificity, but not selectivity.

It’s important to note that the blocking peptide is not an effective control for use with live cells. If you need a control for flow cytometry, we recommend an isotype antibody control instead.

For more details, see our guide to blocking peptides.

We carefully choose the epitope for immunization, taking into account two main parameters: immunogenicity and specificity of the epitope.

Before immunization, we run a search to verify that the chosen epitope has maximum homology with other species and minimum homology among members of the same family or other proteins. After immunization and collection of sera, the antibodies are affinity-purified on immobilized antigens (the injected peptides).

This means you shouldn’t have to worry about your antibody cross-reacting with close members of the same protein family.

Affinity-purified rabbit polyclonal antibodies are mainly IgGs.

Your antibody comes as a lyophilized powder in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), (pH 7.4), with 1% BSA, and 0.05% NaN₃. Before you reconstitute the antibody, we recommend you briefly centrifuge the vial to ensure all of the antibody is at the bottom of the tube. You can then reconstitute the antibody in double-distilled water (DDW) or any other water that you prefer (such as UltraPure DNase/RNase-Free Water). Note: the volume of water that you should add to reconstitute the antibody is shown on the vial. After reconstitution, you can further dilute the antibody to the recommended working concentration with any desired buffer.