What is a nanobody?

Nanobodies are tiny, recombinantly produced antigen binding V_HH fragments, derived from the Alpaca heavy chain IgG antibody (HCAb).

Pictured Bottom Row: The VHH domain represents the absolute smallest antibody fragment necessary to specifically bind an antigen with exceptionally high affinity.

When compared to traditional monoclonal or polyclonal antibodies, nanobodies are:

• Smaller
• More consistent
• Higher affinity
• Easier to use

Nanobodies are offered in a variety of formats, including Nano-Traps, Nano-Boosters, and Chromobodies® .

ChromoTek nanobodies have many superior performance characteristics:

How can I use a nanobody?

In short, nearly any way you please!

Nanobodies come in a variety of formats. They are raised against a fairly diverse range of antigens, and are thus highly versatile tools, capable of being employed in a variety of different situations.

The most common uses for a nanobody are experiments that you are likely already familiar with, like immunoprecipitation, or fluorescence microscopy.

There are also a handful of applications where use of a nanobody is feasible, but use of a conventional antibody would be impractical or impossible.

ChromoTek nanobodies are highly versatile reagents:

What is a Nano-Trap?

Nano-Traps are nanobodies that have been conjugated to agarose or magnetic beads to facilitate cleaner, faster, simpler immunoprecipitations.

Nano-Traps are available in a variety of formats, and target a variety of common tags, including Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP), Red Fluorescent protein (RFP), Myc, GST, & MBP.

Nano-Traps are also available for DNA methyltransferase (Dnmt-1), p53, and PARP-1 for immunoprecipitation of untagged, endogenously expressed protein

Nano-Traps allow you to perform IP experiments with exceptionally high yield, and without contamination from antibody heavy or light chains.

In fact, the GFP-Trap® (pictured above) has already been cited in more than 400 peer reviewed publications. Try one today, and find out why they are so popular!

Nano-Traps significantly improve conventional IP protocols.

• Faster (roughly half the time required for an antibody IP)
• Cleaner (no heavy or light chain antibody contamination)
• More consistent (recombinant reagents for the same interaction every time)
• Higher yield (picomolar to nanomolar affinity constants for GFP and RFP-traps®)

In order to facilitate the most versatility in IP methodology, all nano-traps come conjugated to agarose beads, ferromagnetic beads, or agarose/magnetic beads.

Researchers in the US and Western Europe get next-business day delivery on GFP and RFP-traps purchased at antibodies-online

Nano-Traps available at antibodies-online:

What is a Nano-Booster?

Nano-Boosters use the power of the nanobody to enhance, modulate, or reactivate weak fluorescent signal from a fluorescent protein.

A Nano-Booster is composed of a nanobody, targeting GFP or RFP, and conjugated to an ultra-bright ATTO dye.

The natural fluorescent properties of GFP are enhanced by the supebright ATTO-488 dye coupled to ABIN509419 the GFP-Booster®.

ATTO dyes were specifically chosen for use with Nano-Booster due to their exceptionally bright signal, best-in-class photostability, and narrow Stokes-Shift.

Next-generation imaging techniques like super-resolution microscopy require bright, photostable fluorescent probes.

Nano-Boosters can provide the "signal-boost" required to make fluorescent proteins like GFP bright and stable for super resolution microscopy.

antibodies-online offers the following Nano-Boosters:

What is a Chromobody®?

Chromobodies® are novel tools for live-cell intracellular fluorescent labeling.

Chromobodies® are fusion proteins that contain both a nanobody targeting your protein of interest, and a bright, photostable fluorescent protein.

Because nanobodies are produced from recombinant DNA, you can generate Chromobodies® directly, right inside the cell you want to label. No fussing with messy, frustrating, or time consuming fixation or labeling protocols!

Simply start with the appropriate Chromobody® plasmid, transfect it into a compatible cell line, and utilize persistent, intracellular immunolabeling in live cells!

Chromobodies® use your own cells to produce the nanobodies that will label your protein of interest.

No fixation or additional staining steps are necessary. Finally, live-cell intracellular immunolabeling is a viable strategy!

Chromobody® plasmids are available for the following targets: