How We Choose What We Carry
Most antibody catalogs are built by aggregation: licensing agreements, drop-shipping arrangements, and a product page for every lot a manufacturer is willing to supply. BioTX works from the opposite direction. We start from a target — a protein, a modification, a pathway node researchers are actively trying to measure — and work backward to the smallest set of reagents that can be defended with genetic evidence.
That means every antibody, recombinant protein, or cloning reagent in the catalog has passed through a sourcing filter before it is ever listed: who generated the immunogen, what expression system produced the recombinant standard, and whether the manufacturer's internal QC data includes orthogonal validation rather than a single immunoblot against a vendor-supplied lysate.
Why Knockout and Knockdown Evidence Matters
A specific-looking band on a western blot is not the same as a specific antibody. Off-target binding, cross-reactive paralogs, and non-specific secondary signal can all produce a clean-looking result that has nothing to do with the protein named on the label. The only evidence that directly tests specificity is a genetic loss-of-function comparison: run the same antibody against a wild-type sample and a CRISPR knockout or validated knockdown of the same gene, side by side. If the target band disappears in the null background and nowhere else, the antibody is doing what the datasheet claims.
We treat that comparison as a floor, not a bonus feature. It is the baseline we expect a supplier relationship to produce before a product earns shelf space, and it is why our catalog is deliberately narrower than a typical reseller's.
What a Supplier Relationship Has to Demonstrate
Before a manufacturer's line is added to the catalog, we look for a track record of reproducible lot-to-lot performance, transparent disclosure of the validation method used — not just a pass/fail claim — and a willingness to share raw data on request. Reagents that depend on proprietary black-box QC, or that only offer validation summaries without underlying images or blots, do not clear that bar. This is a narrower, slower way to build a catalog, but it is the only way we know to keep the KO/KD standard meaningful rather than decorative.
