Figure 2. Example of explicit antibody validation.

To test the specificity of the antibody, a comparison was made between the western blots provided by the supplier of the antibody and western blots carried out by the authors of the paper. According to the supplier, two bands should be observed: one between 25 and 37 kDa and one between 50 and 75 kDa. According to the authors, the additional band at >250 kDa is likely caused by six connexin protein subunits that form a connexin hemi-channel. The authors explicitly mention antibody validation as the purpose of this experiment: “We tested the antibody’s specificity using a western blot of Gulf toadfish whole brain homogenates.” Figure from Rosner et al. (2018).