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Updated: Feb 5, 2026

Activated Cross-linked Agarose for the Rapid Development of Affinity Chromatography Resins - Antibody Capture as a Case Study
Published on: August 16, 2019
A cautionary note on the use of cap analogue affinity resins
Regina Cencic1, Jerry Pelletier2
1Department of Biochemistry, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, H3G 1Y6, Canada.
Abstract:
All cellular cytoplasmic mRNAs are capped at their 5' ends with an m7GpppN group. Several proteins that mediate cap function have been identified by cap affinity purification, enabling their characterization in a number of biological processes. Among these, eukaryotic initiation factor (eIF) 4E is the best characterized and plays a critical role in regulating ribosome recruitment to mRNAs during translation initiation. Cap affinity chromatography is often used to identify eIF4E-interacting proteins, which could play critical roles in molding the eIF4E-interactome and impacting on eIF4E-directed translation. Here we address how improper implementation of this technology can lead to false conclusions and provide recommendations to ensure correct interpretation of data obtained by this approach.
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