Diagenode announced today that it has two additional 5-hmC antibodies to complement its original 5-hmC (rat) monoclonal antibody. The two new 5-hmC monoclonal antibody (mouse) and polyclonal antibody (rabbit) antibodies give researchers additional choices for enriching and analyzing 5-hmC in their methylation studies.
The importance of 5-hmC to the epigenetic field was highlighted in a recent Epigenie review: "A year after 5-hydroxymethylcytosine's (5-hmC) dramatic entrance into the epigenetics research scene, the research community has a long list of questions to ask about the 6th base. Investigations into 5-hmC were sidelined for most of the year due to the absence of methods to analyze it. Thankfully those helpless days are history as Diagenode just launched the first 5-hmC monoclonal antibody, an innovation that makes enriching and analyzing 5-hmC a reality." (www.epigenie.com, May 11, 2010)
These latest additions make available the broadest range of validated methylation products to the research community. Prior to this, there were no other validated antibodies available in the market for routinely identifying 5-hmC and discriminating this base from 5-mC. Diagenode and collaborators have extended validation of the 5-hmC antibody from the standard Dot Blot and Immunofluorescence approaches to hMeDIP, and hMeDIP-Seq profiling.
What is truly exciting for researchers is they will now be able to perform Dual MeDIP Assays with multiple choices of 5-hmC antibodies (Diagenode's hMeDIP kit), first by utilizing the 5-hmC monoclonal or polyclonal antibody in hMeDIP, and then the Diagenode monoclonal 33D3 MeDIP Assay (Diagenode's MeDIP kit). This approach will allow researchers to profile both types of cytosine marks in one experiment.
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