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You run an MMP-9 western blot on your tumor tissue lysate and pull two clean bands at roughly 92 kDa and 82 kDa. Which one is the real signal, are you looking at active enzyme or a background artifact, and how do you tell the two apart on the same membrane? Here’s what the two bands mean and how to design experiments that distinguish them cleanly.

Standard polyclonals have a sensitivity advantage — they bind many epitopes on the same target, so even if one epitope is masked or modified, signal still appears. But that sensitivity comes at a cost: every new bleed delivers a slightly different population of antibodies.

BACE1 is a type-I transmembrane aspartic proteinase with three biologically meaningful regions: the catalytic ectodomain, the stalk near the membrane, and the cytoplasmic C-terminal tail. Each domain answers a different question.

Every datasheet recommends a starting dilution, but the dilution that works in our hands isn’t always the dilution that works in yours. Here’s how we recommend titrating.