How to Perform a Semi-dry Transfer
by
All it takes is a little paper cut on your pinky to be reminded of exactly how many times you use the finger that you most certainly have forgotten about. For the next day or two, you will have a renewed respect for the distal digit and realize that in fact it’s a pretty productive member of the hand afterall.
When our semi-dry transfer apparatus broke in lab, it was touch-and-go there for a while. Transferring bands from the SDS-PAGE gel to nitrocellulose during the western blot suddenly required way more effort than it should have. We borrowed an old-school wet-transfer apparatus, which felt like jumping in a Delorean and popping out in 1983. It was actually only a few more steps, but it required way more buffer and it could only transfer two blots at a time. And in today’s on demand society, a few more steps is a few too many.
Semi-dry transfer uses very little buffer, takes only a few minutes to set up and can transfer up to four blots in under 30 minutes. Once you start using it, you’ll soon start to take easy westerns for granted.
