Antibodies in plant science

Antibodies are useful for the detection, measurement and purification of intracellular and extracellular constituents of plants and of their pathogens. Their high sensitivity coupled with a potential for high specificity, can be used to indicate the presence and amount of a given antigen in whole cells, tissues, and in crude and purified extracts of plant material. Antibodies are useful in plant biochemistry, cell and molecular biology to localize key cellular constituents (enzymes, structural proteins, etc.), to quantify developmental or other changes and to identify specific gene products. Their usage in plant pathology is also growing where antigen detection provides a powerful and specific tool for identification of disease at an early stage. In this review, we seek to identify those areas where the use of immunological techniques can be an invaluable aid to plant scientists and to outline techniques and approaches available for dealing with a variety of problems. We do not seek to provide an exhaustive coverage of the literature but instead have included those general texts, reviews and papers which illustrate the techniques we have found to be useful in research in plant biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology and pathology.