Biji T. Kurien - Western Blotting for the Non-Expert (Techniques in Life Science and Biomedicine for the Non-Expert)

The goal of this series is to provide concise but thorough introductory guides to various scientific techniques, aimed at both the non-expert researcher and novice scientist. Each book will highlight the advantages and limitations of the technique being covered, identify the experiments to which the technique is best suited, and include numerous figures to help better illustrate and explain the technique to the reader. Currently, there is an abundance of books and journals offering various scientific techniques to experts, but these resources, written in technical scientific jargon, can be difficult for the non-expert, whether an experienced scientist from a different discipline or a new researcher, to understand and follow. These techniques, however, may in fact be quite useful to the non-expert due to the interdisciplinary nature of numerous disciplines, and the lack of sufficient comprehensible guides to such techniques can and does slow down research and lead to employing inadequate techniques, resulting in inaccurate data. This series sets out to fill the gap in this much needed scientific resource.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13601

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Series Editor Dr. John Walkers invitation in 2006 to edit a volume for the Methods in Molecular Biology series started the journey that has resulted in several works on western blotting. When we had just published a new volume in 2015, Series Editor Dr. Alexander E. Kalyuzhny sent an invitation to write/edit a volume on western blotting for the non-expert. Since Dr. Kalyuzhny had been a repeat contributor to our work, I could not pass up on this invitation. Torn between inviting authors a third time to contribute the chapters they had already submitted and editing the chapters already in possession, I finally decided to add some chapters personally and edit and simplify available chapters as much as possible for this volume. However, prior commitments did not permit the serious start of this work until the last part of 2020. Thus, I gratefully acknowledge that this work contains many of the methods developed by authors of the Methods in Molecular Biology series volume on western blotting.

Simplistically, western blotting involves a series of simple steps which results in colored protein bands appearance as though by magic by adding a substrate. As can be seen from this volume, western blotting can be a fun way for high schoolers and undergraduate students to create art on a new canvas, write secret messages, or even see their fingerprints appear as though by magic. On a more serious note, this method has remained a popular protein detection method since its inception in 1979. Western blotting and subsequent immunostaining have played a crucial role in advancing the proteomics field of immunobiology, neuroscience, to drug discovery. Now, the area has grown tremendously that the researcher has a variety of ways to carry out the protein blotting process. This volume begins with western blottings exciting history and provides simple instructions to carry out the basic method and other protein blotting procedures.