Overexpression and ELISA-based detection of asprosin in cultured cells and mice

The unreliability of commercial recombinant asprosin preparations and variability between asprosin detection assays have proven to be a bottleneck in experimental interpretation. This protocol describes the use of viral vectors and expression plasmid for overexpression and secretion of human asprosin to achieve sustained elevation of asprosin protein in mice and HEK293T cells without using recombinant proteins. This protocol also includes a sandwich ELISA using anti-asprosin monoclonal antibodies for detection of asprosin in media from cultured cells and in plasma of mice. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Duerrschmid et al. (2017), Mishra et al. (2021), and Mishra et al. (2022).