The '-galactosidase molecule can be targeted by antibodies in experiments. But some studies have erroneously used the antibody that targets the bacterial '-galactosidase instead of the mammalian version.Credit: Laguna Design/Science Photo Library The latest case comes two months after Sholto David, a UK-based independent molecular biologist, identified hundreds of studies with a similar error and three months after he and another researcher spotted problems with antibody-validation images in the catalogue of one of the world's largest suppliers, Thermo Fisher Scientific, headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. David reported the latest antibody mix-up in a 21 July post on the research-integrity blog For Better Science. It's not clear whether the flaws compromise the studies, but David says they might in some cases. Antibodies are a workhorse of biological experiments because they bind to and track specific proteins. But they are also a source of many problems. In some cases,...
learn more
