Tau, Abcam, ab79540

This antibody was included in a study testing 49 commercial available Tau antibodies including both pan-Tau antibodies and antibodies specifically recognizing Tau with post-translational modifications (PTM).

The antibodies were tested by peptide array to assess PTM specificity and by immuno-blotting of mouse brain lysates obtained from hTg-Tau (expressing all six human isoforms of Tau) and Tau knock out mice to test Tau specificity. A subset of 35 antibodies was subsequently tested by immunofluorescence staining of human iPSC derived neurons (see reference below for further details)

The study was published in Ercan et al. Molecular Neurodegeneration (2017) 12:87 “A validated antibody panel for the characterization of tau post-translational modifications” and demonstrates that commercially available antibodies show a significant lack of specificity. In particular, PTM-specific antibodies very often recognize non-modified version of Tau.

In the peptide array, this antibody was specific for a Tau peptide phosphorylated at S198. Western blotting of mouse lysates resulted in a strong signal with a no non-specific background.

(https://molecularneurodegeneration.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13024-017-0229-1)