Agrisera News

Agrisera celebrates 50 years of chemical store at Umeå University

Agrisera joined the celebrations of Chemical store at the local Umeå University 50th anniversary last Monday.

The store has been developed over the last 50 years and provides chemicals and solvents, glassware and laboratory supplies, liquid nitrogen, dry ice, gas etc., to all departments at Umeå University.

Thank you to all who came by to take a short break during shopping in the store and talk about antibodies.

Agrisera at chemical store of Umeå University

Improved method of isolation of intact chloroplasts, validated with Agrisera antibodies

A group of researchers from India, published an interesting article recently: "An improved method for isolating intact chloroplasts from different plant species".

Developed protocol was optimized for several species, including Nicotiana benthamiana, Arabidopsis thaliana, Oryza sativa, Solanum lycopersicum and secondary metabolite-rich plants: Stevia rebaudiana, Camellia sinensis, and Sambucus javanica.

To evaluate purity of isolated chloroplasts different methods were applied, including: fluorescence microscopy, confocal imaging and subcellular fractionation assays. Purity of specific cellular fractions was confirmed using the following Agrisera antibodies:

Anti-Lhcb2 | LHCII type II chlorophyll a/b-binding protein
Anti-RbcL | Rubisco large subunit, form I
Anti-H3 | Histone H3 (rabbit antibody) (nuclear marker)
Anti-MnSOD | Manganese superoxide dismutase

Complete list of Agrisera plant cell compartment marker antibodies can be found here.

Plant chloroplast

Interview with Dr. Tatjana Kleine

Dr. Tatjana Kleine

Dr. Tatjana Kleine, principal investigator in the Plant Molecular Biology Group at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich), studies how chloroplasts communicate with the rest of the cell during stress. Her work focuses on organellar gene expression and retrograde signalling, using Arabidopsis as a model system. In this interview, she shares how her curiosity for nature began at an early age, inspired by observing a small forest lake ecosystem at school—an experience that sparked a lifelong fascination with plants and their biology.

- Please tell us about yourself and your research/institution.

My name is Tatjana Kleine, and I am a principal investigator in the Plant Molecular Biology Group at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich). My research is dedicated to understanding how chloroplasts—the cellular organelles responsible for photosynthesis—communicate with the rest of the cell to regulate development and respond to environmental stress.

I am particularly interested in organellar gene expression and the remarkable process of retrograde signalling, whereby chloroplasts send signals to the cell nucleus to influence gene activity. Using model plants such as Arabidopsis thaliana, my work seeks to uncover the molecular networks that enable plants to adjust to changes in light, temperature, and other environmental challenges.

By advancing our knowledge of these adaptive strategies, I hope to contribute to a deeper understanding of how plants thrive in dynamic environments—a question of growing importance in the face of climate change and the need for sustainable agriculture.

- What motivated you to get into plant science?

From an early age, I was fascinated by the natural world—one of my fondest memories from school is a half-year project in which I observed an ecological niche: a tiny lake nestled within a forest and its surrounding environment. I have a lifelong curiosity about plants, which I paired with a growing enthusiasm for molecular biology, especially after discovering that it was possible to study and even manipulate plants at the molecular level.

Plants have always captured my imagination. They are indispensable to all life on Earth, providing us with food, oxygen, and vital raw materials. Their extraordinary diversity, resilience, and evolutionary ingenuity offer endless opportunities for exploration and discovery. Even as I focus on basic research, I am driven by the hope of making a small but meaningful contribution to our understanding of plant life.

- How have you used (Agrisera) antibodies in your research?

I believe that anyone interested in plant biology either uses—or should consider using—Agrisera antibodies. I initially turned to their products for the detection of photosynthetic proteins, but as their portfolio has continued to expand, I now rely on Agrisera antibodies also to detect and quantify my proteins of interest, including those with nuclear localization—but also to confirm protein localization, provide reliable loading controls, and analyse protein dynamics under various experimental conditions. Agrisera’s antibody versatility and high quality have made them an indispensable resource in my research and for the broader plant science community.

- Any further comments?

I spent three wonderful years as a postdoctoral researcher at the UPSC in Umeå, located near Vännäs, where Agrisera is based. I have extremely fond memories of my time there and grew to love Västerbotten—it truly is a special place. During this period, I had the pleasure of getting to know Joanna and her team. I greatly appreciate their dedication as well as their constant and prompt support. Thank you very much!

Links

• Dr. Tatjana Kleine
• Agrisera antibodies to proteins involved in environmental stress response
• Agrisera Antibodies reactive in Arabidopsis thaliana

How to interpret Western blot results, a new webinar with Agrisera, conducted with Agrisera distributor in Taiwan, Yao-Hong Biotechnology Inc.

Western blot, a complex technique in which Agrisera antibodies are widely applied, offers many challanges. Not only with its procedure itself, which consists of many steps with high complexitiy but also with the interpretation of obtained results.

Therefore, a new webinar has been prepared by Agrisera's Technical Support Manager, based on troubleshooting of hundreds of blots, over the last 25 years.

The webinar content included answers to the following questions:

-How to make sure that correct antibody is used in a project?

-What are the major pitfalls with interpretation of obtained results and how to avoid them

-What to do if target protein band is found in wildtype (WT) andknockout mutant (KO)?

-What are antibody validation strategies?

Interested in this webinar/workshop for your organization? You are welcome to contact us.

How to interpret Western blot results, webinar with Agrisera

Interview with Assoc. Prof. Alizée Malnoë

Assoc. Prof. Alizée Malnoë

Dr. Alizée Malnoë is an Associate Professor in Plant Biology at Indiana University in Bloomington, USA. Her lab investigates how plants defend themselves against damage from too much sunlight, a process essential for their survival. After several years in Sweden at Umeå Plant Science Centre, Dr. Malnoë moved her group to Bloomington in 2024, continuing her research into photosynthesis and photoprotection.

- Please tell us about yourself and your research/institution.

I am an Associate Professor in Plant Biology at Indiana University in Bloomington, USA. Our lab research how plants protect themselves from sunburn. We moved in April 2024 from Umeå Plant Science Centre in Sweden. There, it was an amazing perk to meet and connect with Joanna and other Agrisera team members in person several times throughout the year, and receive our reagent orders on the same day they were ordered!

- What motivated you to get into plant science?

I wanted to make biofuel from renewable resources, I started my research experience with the microalga Chlamydomonas (affectionately called Chlamy) and studying photosynthetic electron transport for hydrogen production. I realized that much basic science is needed to understand and optimize natural processes, and how thrilling the job of an academic scientist is in investigating how nature works. I've since studied photoprotection mechanisms in the plant model Arabidopsis, with Kris Niyogi at UC Berkeley during my postdoctoral training, and now with my own group. Algae, plants, are so important for our human lives: they give us food, fiber, feed, fuel and oxygen!

- How have you used (Agrisera) antibodies in your research?

Agrisera is THE provider of antibodies for photosynthetic research, I learned alongside Catherine de Vitry during my PhD at IBPC Paris how to analyze protein content in different mutant Chlamy strains. IBPC is one of the birthplaces of many chloroplast protein antibodies sold by Agrisera, it felt there was no limit to the questions we could answer, they had them all!

A notable moment during my postdoctoral training was when we had just found an unknown protein to be involved in photoprotection now named relaxation of qH1 (ROQH1). We were about to design an antibody but I searched the Agrisera website to see if they might already have an antibody against it (this was a long shot) but they did! These was thanks to Agrisera's work in collaboration with Sabeeha Merchant and Arthur Grossman's labs where they had generated antibodies of several "greencut" proteins, those that are conserved throughout the green lineage but not present or poorly conserved in non-photosynthetic organisms.

- Any further comments?

We're tremendously thankful for Agrisera's products and Joanna's help troubleshooting and answering our numerous immunoblots' related inquiries. Please check us out here: https://malnoelab.com/ and contact us with any questions! See also for a recent article about our team: https://www.idsnews.com/article/2025/04/alizee-manoe-photosynthesis-iu-research

Links

• Assoc. Prof. Alizée Malnoë
• Malnoë Lab, Indiana University Bloomington
• Agrisera Antibodies to GreenCut proteins
• Agrisera Antibodies to Photosynthetic Research

Latest

Agrisera celebrates 50 years of chemical store at Umeå University
2025-10-24 Improved method of isolation of intact chloroplasts, validated with Agrisera antibodies
2025-10-22 Interview with Dr. Tatjana Kleine
2025-10-15 How to interpret Western blot results, a new webinar with Agrisera, conducted with Agrisera distributor in Taiwan, Yao-Hong Biotechnology Inc.
2025-10-10 Interview with Assoc. Prof. Alizée Malnoë
2025-10-01 Nobel prize winner, professor Emmanuelle Charpentier visits Umeå University
2025-09-29 Interview with Dr. Kirk J Czymmek
2025-09-22 Agrisera at 12th Conference of the Polish Society of Experimental Plant Biology
2025-09-09 Interview with Prof. Alejandra A. Covarrubias
2025-09-03 Agrisera's 40 years celebration
2025-09-01

Agrisera News

Agrisera celebrates 50 years of chemical store at Umeå University

Improved method of isolation of intact chloroplasts, validated with Agrisera antibodies

Interview with Dr. Tatjana Kleine

Dr. Tatjana Kleine

How to interpret Western blot results, a new webinar with Agrisera, conducted with Agrisera distributor in Taiwan, Yao-Hong Biotechnology Inc.

Interview with Assoc. Prof. Alizée Malnoë

Assoc. Prof. Alizée Malnoë

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