How do I choose a positive control?

If you require a suitable positive control, please check the datasheet, which will often have a suggested positive control. Always ensure the tissue or cell line you use is from a tested species. Not all the datasheets will have a suggested suitable control, and we recommend the following in these circumstances:

• Check to see the validation images of the antibody. Any tissues, cells or lysates that have been used successfully by these experiments can be considered a suitable positive control.

• Try looking at the Swiss-Prot or Omnigene database links on the datasheet. These databases will often have a list of tissues that the protein is expressed in. These can also be considered suitable positive controls.

• Check the GeneCards entry for the protein. This will usually provide you with relative levels of expression in various tissues.

• If you still have difficulty finding a suitable control, we recommend doing a quick literature search on PubMed to see which tissues and cells express the protein of interest.