Dear Jeni,

You'd think that one of the 30,000 research scientists at the 36th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience would be able to help me with this one, but no such luck. For the past year or so, I have been trying to definitively show that human astrocytes (at least those of the commerical A172 line) express cytokine-induced iNOS and CXCL10 via the NF-kB pathway. Previously I have been isolating the p50/p65 heterodimer by nuclear extraction and quantifying the p65 by western immunoblot analysis, but the bands--while clearly showing that NF-kB is involved--have been rather blurry and inconsistent between experiments. I hypothesize that one can observe p65 spectrophotometrically through an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) since we do the same for the aforementioned CXCL10, however, I have yet to find a commercially available kit. If no such kit exists, can you tell me which antibodies and buffers I need, and how I may obtain pure NF-kBp65 to use as a control? Thanks Jeni, you're a lifesaver.

--Anonymous

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Dear Anonymous Scientist,

It seems that you are looking for a philosopher's stone of sorts, a mystical substance that can be used for any purpose and can function as any imaginable chemical. Fortunately for you, such a magical substance does actually exist and, perhaps even more importantly, any random Jeni can tell you where to find it. Of course, this philosopher's stone is legendarily difficult to attain. Are you, a lab-coated scientist at home only among beakers and esoteric compounds, up for the challenge? The substance occurs naturally in only one known place: the spleen of a living jackalope. Proceed, therefore, humble scientist, into the wild world of the American West and capture one of these oversized bunnies forthwith, and you shall be rewarded with eternal fame.
--Jeni