AIMS AND LIMITATIONS IN THE USE OF ANTIPEPTIDE ANTIBODIES IN MOLECULAR-BIOLOGY

Antibodies to peptides obtained by synthesis and, to a much lesser ext ent, prepared by enzymatic digestion of proteins, have been widely use d in the last ten years in a variety of immunochemical and biological investigations. There are however several limitations in the correct u tilization of such reagents. In fact, in spite of their 'predetermined specificity', antipeptide antibodies often fail to discriminate relat ed molecules, and their reactivity with native proteins may be scarce or even absent, even if the peptide has been selected from surface reg ions of the protein. Our critical point of view, concerning two main a spects of antipeptide antibody features, i.e, specificity and reactivi ty, will be presented here, as confronted with information from the av ailable literature. We have selected a restricted number of references among hundreds of publications dealing with antipeptide antibodies: f or sure we neglected outstanding papers on the subject, and we apologi ze in advance.