At BenchSci, we're always adding more reagents and the associated publication data to the platform to ensure comprehensiveness. At the same time, we also want to make sure that searching is intuitive and specific for your particular experiment. That's why we released two new updates on BenchSci to help you search for applications by acronym, and to filter antibodies by isotypes and additional specifications. Read on to find out more information about these updates!

Search by application acronyms

One of the challenges of finding the most relevant experimental data from the literature is that, in addition to protein aliases, applications may also be referred to by their acronyms. The following list shows a few examples that most scientists are familiar with:

• Western Blot = WB
• Immunohistochemistry = IHC
• Immunocytochemistry = ICC
• Immunofluorescence = IF
• Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching = FRAP
• Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer = FRET
• Flow Cytometry = FC or Fcy
• Mass Cytometry = CyTOF (Cytometry Time-Of-Flight)
• In Situ Hybridization = ISH

Because these acronyms are commonly used, we want to ensure that scientists can easily find the associated published data by typing them into the main search bar. For example, typing "FRET" into the search bar populates the suggestions based on Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer application stored in our bioinformatics graph.

"Isotype" filter for antibodies

Depending on your experimental interest, you may be looking for antibodies of a specific isotype. For example:

• When selecting an isotype control for a IgG1 PCNA antibody, you would need another IgG1 antibody that does not bind to PCNA
• Antibody light chain fragments, or F(ab), for blocking non-specific background in double staining experiments
• F(ab')2 for better penetration into tissue, thus facilitating better antigen recognition in IHC

For these reasons, we added a new multi-selection "Isotype" filter under the "Antibody Specs" section.

With the "Isotype" filter, you can find specific classes of antibodies, like: IgA, IgD, IgE, IgG, and IgM, and then you have the option to further narrow your search for light chain variations kappa and lambda. You can also limit your search to specific immunoglobulin subclasses, for example IgG1-4, or the rat and mouse homologs IgG2A, IgG2B, IgG2C. Selecting multiple isotypes shows products that satisfy any of the specified isotypes.

"Additional Specs" filter for antibodies

You may also be looking for antibodies that are of a particular specification. For example:

Carrier-free antibodies for applications like CyTOF and Imaging Mass Cytometry

• Affinity purified antibodies for chromatin immunoprecipitation
• Lyophilized antibodies for longer-term storage

To help, we added a new "Additional Specs" filter, which includes antibody specifications of the following categories:

• Purification methods (ie. affinity purified, protein A purified)
• Form (ie. lyophilized, serum)
• Solution components (ie. azide-free, BSA-free)

By adding these additional antibody specifications to our platform, we hope to further reduce the antibody search time by eliminating the need to review these data on individual vendor product pages.

That's it! Are there additional product specifications that you'd like to see filterable on BenchSci? Did we capture the alias and/or acronym of your favourite application? Let us know in the comment section below, and subscribe to our blog to be notified of future updates!