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The boring details

Which antibodies work for post-fix overnight staining?

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All antibodies listed here have been tested on 2x10^6 (two million) cells using the eBioscience™ Foxp3 / Transcription Factor Staining Buffer Set. I have not done much testing with the BD equivalent, but it seems to behave similarly. For human, a good option is to use the BD Cytofix/Cytoperm kit, staining overnight in the perm/wash buffer, either in the fridge or at room temperature. Note that each antibody should be titrated for best results and that the approximate dilutions listed are only a rough guide. The precise dilution factor scales somewhat linearly with the brightness of the fluorophore if the conjugate of a particular clone has been prepared well.

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Note that for overnight surface staining on unfixed cells, essentially all antibodies work. The optimal dilution factor is typically 2-5x less than for a 30-60min stain.

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For human, pre-blocking for 15-30min prior to overnight staining is essential. Mouse serum at ~3% works well; this may be combined with rat serum and/or commercial Fc-blocking reagents for most purposes. You may find that just adding the block to the staining mix is adequate.

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Note that some fluorophores can be problematic when used intracellularly. This isn't true for every conjugate of that dye, but is more likely to be an issue with these dyes: APC-Cy7-type tandems (APC-Cy7, APC-H7, APC-Fire 750, APC-Cy5.5, APC-R700, much less so with APC-Fire 810), PerCP-Cy5.5 (less so with PerCP-eFluor 710), eFluor506, BB630. NovaFluors are not suitable for flow cytometry on permeabilized cells without extensive work and protocol modifications.

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Additional information can be found on BioLegend's and Thermo's websites, although this is more accurate for PFA fixation.

Human

Mouse

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