Monoclonal Anti-ß-Actin antibody produced in mouse

In staining of chicken gizzard ultrathin tissue cryosections, the antibody labels the dense bodies and longitudinal channels linking consecutive dense bodies that are also occupied by desmin and the membrane-associated dense plaque. It does not stain adult cardiac and skeletal muscles except for traces due to contaminations of the sample with non-muscle cells, or if embryonic tissue is being used.The antibody can be used for staining of acetone-fixed frozen sections, EM preparations, and microinjection experiments. B5, ethanol, methacam, or Bouin's solutions can be used as fixatives. The epitope recognized by the antibody is resistant to formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedding.The two major cytoskeletal proteins implicated in cell motility are actin and myosin. Actin and myosin are constituents of many cell types and are involved in cellular process including locomotion, secretion, cytoplasmic streaming, phagocytosis, and cytokinesis. Although actin is one of the most conserved eukaryotic proteins, it is expressed in mammals and birds as at least six isoforms characterized by electrophoresis and amino acid sequence analysis. Four of them represent the differentiation markers of muscle tissues and two are found practically in all cells. There are three a-actins (skeletal, cardiac, and smooth muscle), one ß-actin (ß-nonmuscle), and two ?-actins (?-smooth muscle and ?-nonmuscle). Actin isoforms show >90% overall sequence homology, but only 50–60% homology in their NH2-terminal residues.