Coimmunoprecipitation is most commonly used to test whether two proteins of interest are associated in vivo, but it can also be used to identify novel interacting partners of a target protein. In both cases, the cells, which may have been labeled with [35S]methionine, are harvested and lysed under conditions that preserve protein-protein interactions. The target protein is specifically immunoprecipitated from the cell extracts, and the immunoprecipitates are fractionated by SDS-PAGE. - [Read Identification of Associated Proteins by Coimmunoprecipitation Protocol]
Coimmunoprecipitation is one of the most useful techniques for revealing protein-protein interactions. Good negative controls to verify the specificity of the coimmunoprecipitation procedure are (1) performing the same immunoprecipitation experiment using beads coupled to the preimmune serum and (2) probing the Western blot with antibodies against protein known not to interact with the coimmunoprecipitated proteins under physiological conditions. - [Read Protein Coimmunoprecipitation in Arabidopsis Protocol]
Protocol describes the use of FLAG-epitope-tagged proteins for both small-scale analysis and large-scale coimmunoprecipitation of interacting proteins. When examining protein interactions, it is sometimes possible to immunoprecipitate an endogenous protein X directly, without using an epitope tag, if antibodies are available. The advantage of examining interactions of endogenously expressed proteins is that these are likely to be physiological and less likely to be an artifact of overexpression. - [Read Using FLAG Epitope-Tagged Proteins for Coimmunoprecipitation of Interacting Proteins Protocol]