what is western blot

IIRC, it's an HIV testing procedure.

 

 

edit: Looking at the wiki on it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_blot), it appears to be a generic protocol for testing for a number of things. HIV just happens to be one of the things you can test for (when you do it in a certain way, of course).

Edited December 29, 201113 yr by InigoMontoya

It detects and quantifies proteins using a method similar to Southern blot (used on DNA). The Southern blot was developed by a guy named Southern, and when others developed similar methods, they used a play on words with his last name and named the methods after other compass points. That's why, technically, Southern blot is capitalized, but western blot, etc are not.

 

In general, blots use voltage to draw molecules through gels over est periods of time. Known molecules are used as standards, the performance (ie, the distance traveled through the gel) of which analysts compare the performance of the samples to determine their molecular composition.

That is interesting. While I knew that Northerns and Westerns are derived from Southern, I was not aware that they are not capitalized (in publications they generally are). As a comment to the blot: the process takes at least two steps. The first is a standard gel as described above. In the second step (the actual blot) the proteins are transferred and immobilized on a membrane. On this membrane immunoreactions against target proteins are carried out, detected and quantified (if applicable). Molecular compositions are not detectable by these means.

The method gives two information. 1) Molecular weight (as assessed by the gel based separation) 2) reactivity to antibodies in question (technically presence of epitopes).