The Design of a Quantitative Western Blot Experiment

Figure 3

(From [8] with permission from the authors and Bio-Rad.) Image acquisition and densitometric analysis. Image Lab software version 5.0 (Bio-Rad) was used for image acquisition and densitometric analysis of the gels, blots, and film in this study. The software interprets the raw data in three dimensions with the length and width of the band defined by the “Lanes and Bands” tool in concert with the “Lane Profile” tool such that the chemiluminescent signal emitted from the blot is registered in the third dimension as a peak rising out of the blot surface. The density of a given band was measured as the total volume under the three-dimensional peak, which could be viewed in two dimensions using the “Lane Profile” tool to adjust the precise width of the band to account for the area under the shaded peak of interest. Background subtraction was set by using the rolling disc setting in the “Lanes” tool. The rolling disc values were set such that the background was subtracted under the band (i.e., peak) of interest in a uniform manner between the lanes of a given blot. In this case, the rolling disc for the two lanes analyzed was set to 18 and 25, respectively, such that the peaks of interest were cut at a consistent level between the markers shown with an “X”.