転写膜の開発と分子生物学への貢献

抄録

The history of molecular biology and transfer membrane has reached its 21st year since the time when Dr. E. M. Southern developed his technology to apply transference to cellulose nitrate membranes. In those days, DNA was fractionally cut off in electrophoresis gel and the resulting pattern was immobilized for analysis. Therefore, Southern Blotting, as it was named, was a great influence on the development of molecular biology. Following on from that development, Northern Blotting, by means of immobilization of RNA and Western Blotting for protein was developed using Southern Blotting as a basis. For the next 20 years, the development of transfer membrane itself has also advanced greatly, so that two types of transfer membrane using cellulose nitrate and more than 5 types of transfer membrane using synthetic material have been developed and commercialized. There are now more than 20 different types of transfer membrane, taking that sold by manufacturers into account. At present, there is not much interest in materials and hole diameters of transfer membrane or the buffers used, although they no doubt possess important experimental data. Also, no explicit definiton is given for ways of some difference in its method of transference of membrane. Here, I attempt to consider transfer membrane from the begining, and from that perspective I will describe basic types of transfer membrane and their transference procedures.