Calpain Antibody from MyBioSource.com

Schistosoma mansoni is a parasite trematode that inhabits the blood vessels of its mammalian hosts and the causative agent for schistosomiasis which affect more than 200 million people. Because of the difficulties in maintaining the cultures of Schistosomas in laboratories, one approach to develop immunotheraphy against this disease is to clone the genes encoding antigens that are reactive to the antisera of infected hosts (1, 2). This approach led to identification of several candidate genes, one of these candidate genes (Rizk) has high degree of similarities ot the large subunit of calcium-activated neutral proteinase (CANP-calpain). Calpain is an intracellular protease that is ubiquitouslty present in most mammalian tissues and is involved in activation of proteins kinase C, degradation of cytoskeletal and muscle proteins and modification of neurofilaments (3). The Calpain activity is modified by calcium and its endogenous inhibitor calpastin (4). There are 2 isoform of calpain uCalpain and mCalpain requiring uM and mM concentration of activators. Calpain is a heterodimer consisting of 2 large 80kDa subunits and small 30 kDa subunit. There are two functional domains on large 80 kDa subunits, a papain like thiolprotease domain near N-terminal and a calmodulin like Calcium binding domain near the C-terminal end of the protein. The small subunit contains a calmodulin like calcium binding domain and a EF hand motif. Calpaian form Schistosoma mansoni has some degree of sequence similarity to calpain form human (4). The Schistosoma mansoni calpian has two putative glycosylation sites compared to one in human calpain. The amino-terminal end of calpain is rich in glycine which suggest its interaction with plasma membrane upon activation in the presence of calcium and phospholipids. Anti-Calpain selective antibodies were generated using cyclic peptide methodology, the peptide was selected form the schistosoma mansoni Calpain gene at position 737-758. The Calpain-selective antibodies were affinity purified against immobilized antigen based affinity chromatography and are represented as pure IgG fractions stabilized in antibody stabilization buffer. The polyclonal antibodies strongly label a 85-88 kDa protein form PC-Calpain sample on Western blots. The Calpain antibodies are also available as HRP conjugate for confocal, Western blotting and immunocytochemical analyses as special order item. MyBioSource will also conjugate antibodies with fluorescent probes upon request at extra charge. MyBioSource, will also provide Western blot positive controls for most of these antibodies in ready-touse buffer for easy identification of respective proteins. Limited quantities of antigens are also available. Please enquire for their availability before ordering