An MBoC Favorite: A guide to simple and informative binding assays

Abstract

This MBoC Technical Perspective (Pollard, 2010) was sorely needed. The author had been grousing about this for some time and conveying it in various quarters. One occasion was the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) Physiology Course. He had given a typically fine lecture, during which he had stunned the students by asking whether they knew the equilibrium association constants for any of the protein–protein complexes being studied in the course. The silence in the MBL Lille auditorium was deafening. This unease continued to work on the author and was manifest later in the didactic underpinnings of a distinctive textbook he coauthored with Bill Earnshaw. His MBoC Technical Perspective was a wake-up call about shabby versus proper binding assays, supportively emphasizing that the concepts and methodology are in fact not so daunting, with the added imperative that the investigator should care. Elegantly written, this was a class act.