Affimers and nanobodies as molecular probes and their applications in imaging.

ABSTRACT: Antibodies are the most widely used, traditional tool for labelling molecules in cells. In the past five to ten years, many new labelling tools have been developed with significant advantages over the traditional antibody. Here, we focus on nanobodies and the non-antibody binding scaffold proteins called Affimers. We explain how they are generated, selected and produced, and we describe how their small size, high binding affinity and specificity provides them with many advantages compared to antibodies. Of particular importance, their small size enables them to better penetrate dense cytoskeletal regions within cells, as well as tissues, providing them with specific advantage for super-resolution imaging, as they place the fluorophore with a few nanometres of the target protein being image

SUBMITTER: Cordell P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9450889 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature