Aims and limitations in the use of antipeptide antibodies in molecular biology

Antibodies to peptides obtained by synthesis and, to a much lesser extent, prepared by enzymatic digestion of proteins, have been widely used in the last ten years in a variety of immunochemical and biological investigations. There are however several limitations in the correct utilization of such reagents. In fact, in spite of their 'predetermined specificity', antipeptide antibodies often fail to discriminate related molecules, and their reactivity with native proteins may be scarce or even absent, even if the peptide has been selected from surface regions of the protein. Our critical point of view, concerning two main aspects of antipeptide antibody features, i.e. specificity and reactivity, will be presented here, as confronted with information from the available literature. We have selected a restricted number of references among hundreds of publications dealing with antipeptide antibodies: for sure we neglected outstanding papers on the subject, and we apologize in advance.