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Updated: Jun 24, 2026

An Optimized Single-Molecule Pull-Down Assay for Quantification of Protein Phosphorylation
Published on: June 6, 2022
Phos-tag beads as an immunoblotting enhancer for selective detection of phosphoproteins in cell lysates
Emiko Kinoshita-Kikuta1, Eiji Kinoshita, Tohru Koike
1Department of Functional Molecular Science, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Hiroshima University, Kasumi 1-2-3, Hiroshima 734-8553, Japan.
Abstract:
The low specificity of anti-phosphoprotein antibodies is often a problem in immunoblotting analyses. We introduce a simple pretreatment procedure for cell lysates to give more specific detection of phosphoproteins in immunoblotting. Cellular phosphoproteins were preferentially trapped on Phos-tag agarose phosphate-affinity beads in a homemade spin-centrifuge microtube unit, and nonphosphorylated proteins were excluded in the filtrate. The phosphoprotein-bound beads suspended in a sample-loading dye solution were subjected to sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, followed by Western blotting. We demonstrated improved detection of phosphorylated Shc and mitogen-activated protein kinase isoforms in A431 cell lysates by this new technique.
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