Thread: Effect of EDTA on commercial antibodies

Hello!

I´m new in this forum. I´m from a spanish speaking country (Argentina) so I apologize in advanced if I write something incorrectly.

I would like to know if EDTA, being a chelating agent, inhibits the function of commercial antibodies (for example an antibody against a tag of a recombinant protein)

Could EDTA function as a denaturing agent? What should I look for to understand the effects of this reagent on antibodies?

Thanks in advanced

Regards,

Gabriela.

We use EDTA as an anticoagulant in the clinical lab all the time, including tests within the blood bank. Antigen typing uses commercial antibodies to determine a patient's rbc phenotype, so I would guess any inhibitory effect is negligible or we would be using one of the several other anticoagulant options for these tests.

Hi, thanks for answering!

So, I will be honest with you. I, accidentally, dilute an alicuot of a very expensive antibody in EDTA 0.45 mM, instead of glycerol. I don´t know how it happened, but it happened. I don´t do this, actually this never happened to me before. I hope I won´t get fired when they find out, hehe.
So, as it is an antibody againt HA tag, and we purify recombinant protein with HA tag, I was going to do a western blot to check the function of the antibody.
But for what I´ve seen, EDTA is used 1-1.5 mg/mL as anticoagulant and the concentration in my tube is much more higher tan that.
And also, I can´t do the western without them watching so they are going to ask and I will have to tell them before I have the results...

bye!!