Tiede, C. et al. eLife 6, e24903 (2017).

Antibodies are essential research tools across biology, but problems with antibody specificity, reproducibility, and characterization are prevalent, not to mention the drawbacks associated with traditional animal-based methods for generating antibodies. Recombinantly produced binder proteins, such as the Affimer scaffold, are promising alternatives. These reagents can be rapidly selected and expressed in Escherichia coli or mammalian cells, and they target proteins and even small molecules with high affinity, specificity, and stability. Tiede et al. demonstrate that Affimer antibody mimetics are useful in multiple research applications, such as for pull-down of specific Src-Homology 2 (SH2) domains, function blocking of VEGFR2 and the ion channel TRPV1, in vivo staining of tenascin C, affinity fluorescence of the herpes virus of turkeys protein UL49, super-resolution imaging of the cancer-related HER4 receptor, and even for detection of the explosive organic molecule trinitrotoluene (TNT).