Choose right HA Tag Antibody?

Epitope tags include HA-tag, VSV-G tag, Myc-tag and NE-tag. These tags are particularly useful for western blotting, immunofluorescence and immunoprecipitation experiments, although they also find use in antibody purification.

If you’re working in the life sciences with HA tag in your vector or fusion proteins, chances are you’re going to be using right HA antibodies in your research. Here we’ve set out some top tips to get you started in making a good and suitable HA tag antibody buying decision.

Is this HA antibody suitable for your application?

It’s “impossible” to predict which antibodies will work and which will not.  Just because an antibody has been successfully used in one application does not mean it will work for all applications. That means excellent WB and IHC results do not tell you whether the antibody is the right choice for a so-called ChIP-seq experiment, in which chromatin immunoprecipitation is followed by second-generation sequencing.

You must choose application-specific validation of HA antibody you use. However, due to the price and performance, researchers prefer the antibody with more validated applications, especially these kinds of epitope antibodies.

Decision on monoclonal or polyclonal HA tag antibody

Our advice is you should go with the most validated antibody, but if you are lucky enough to have two well validated antibodies to choose between, then polyclonal antibodies tend to be cheaper because they are raised against multiple epitopes on your protein and are therefore less specific. Monoclonal are more expensive and take longer to produce, however they are specific to a single epitope. Monoclonal antibodies are most useful if you are trying to identify specific isoforms or region of a full-length protein, especially in tag fusion detection.

IP (1:200) – WB (1:5,000) analysis of HA fusion protein expression in 293 cells. Untransfected 293 cell lysate (lane A), transfected 293 cell lysate with HA-tag protein (lane B); IP untransfected 293 cell lysate with Anti HA tag mAb (lane C); IP transfected 293 cell lysate with normal Mouse IgG (lane D), or with Anti HA tag mAb (lane E), and IP transfected 293 without both normal Mouse IgG and HA tag mAb (lane F).

A manufacturer may license their antibody to other companies, so do not buy three antibodies to test without making sure they are actually different. With common monoclonals that are supplied by many companies you might also consider shopping around for the best supplier of a clone.

Finally, remember you should feel free to contact the company supplier for advice any time. The suppliers really should be helpful, many pride themselves on their customer service, and if they are not you can remember that for next time you buy an antibody.

If you are looking for a detection tool to quantify or localize your VSV-G fusion proteins, we highly recommend you to try our featured monoclonal HA Antibody risk free. This antibody with clone number 4F6 can specifically recognizes native and denatured forms of VSV-G fusion proteins, with which can meet your any requirements for Western Blot, Immunofluorescence and Immunoprecipitation assays.