Immunoprecipitation (IP) is a method to pull down a protein out of solution using an antibody that specifically binds to that particular protein. Immunoprecipitation is a powerful technique to isolate and concentrate a particular protein from a sample containing many thousands of different proteins, to test protein-protein interactions, and to pull multiple members of a complex out of solution by latching onto one member with an antibody. This protocol describes a general immunoprecipitation strategy using cell cultures as starting material.
HeLa S3 and HeLa cells were cultured in Dulbecco’s modified Eagles Medium containing 10% fetal bovine serum (Invitrogen) and antibiotics
Protein A beads (Bio-Rad Laboratories); Protein G beads (Santa Cruz Biotechnology) Note: For rabbit polyclonal antibodies and mouse monoclonal antibodies IgG2a, IgG2b, IgG3, we usually couple antibodies to protein A beads; For mouse monoclonal antibodies IgG1, rat monoclonal antibodies, and mouse, rat, goat, and donkey polyclonal antibodies, we usually couple antibodies to protein G beads.