Can I label fish vascular endothelial cells with commercially available anti-CD31 and anti-CD34 antibodies?

Answer 1

It's a bit out of my league but here is a suggestion...

I guess you know for sure that the organism you are studying expresses homologues of the CD31 and CD34.
I also assume you have done a literature search on these proteins and have all the available info.
Find which part of the (human?) proteins is recognized by the commercial antibodies. See if the protein sequence at the recognition site is the same in your homologues. If not forget about it.

If it is, it will probably work if the antibodies are designed to recognize denatured proteins and your experimental conditions are denaturing. If the antibodies recognize tertiary native structure or if you are using living cells then you need to find out if the stuctures are similar. If there is no info on the structures then the only way is to try, but you would need lots of controls to make sure that the anitbody is not cross-reacting with a different protein.

If you have any control on the expression of the protein/can manipulate the gene, couldn't you insert a N or C terminus tag and use an antibody against that? Triple flag is one of the best.
However you would need to make sure that the tag is not interfering with the function of your protein.

Answer 2

I'll allow it!