An approach for quantifying western blots: the case of signal intensity and the statistical analysis

In biological sciences, western blotting technique is widely used to quantify the expression of proteins in a given sample. However, there is no unified method for quantifying the expression of proteins. As a consequence, quantitative analysis of expression of protein through western blotting often suffers from data inconsistency. At the same time, extraction of the poor sample size (n=3/5/7) turns such analysis non-Gaussian and less robust to statistical errors. In present study, we attempt a noble approach while analyzing an image from western blotting using Gaussian blur as filter and thereby generating data in order to perform meaningful statistical analysis. The differences among various blots that correspond to the expressed target proteins are tested viably using appropriate statistical tools. This procedure of quantifying western blotting is comprehensive, simple and can be applied to collect data in compliance with statistical norms. Furthermore, repeating western blotting on a set of particular proteins may improve the analysis part as well.