Western Blotting

Abstract

Western blot (also known as protein immunoblot) is an important molecular biology technique routinely used in most research laboratories for the separation, immunodetection, and identification of proteins (Mahmood and Yang 2012; Manoussopoulos et al. 2000). Western blot was developed in 1979 by modifying available blotting techniques such as Southern blot (DNA blotting) and northern blot (RNA blotting) (Towbin et al. 1979). In virology, western blot detects and relatively quantifies the expression of viral proteins and viral load from an infected sample.