Dephosphorylation of epitopes in murine skin sections

Abstract Dephosphorylation of epitopes is a common way of testing phospho-specificity of antibodies. Whereas it is a regularly used protocol for dephosphorylation in cell lysates, its use in immunohistochemistry has been limited. Here we describe a methodology to dephosphorylate adult murine tissues by using Antarctic Phosphatase, an alkaline phosphatase. This protocol is compatible with subsequent immunohistochemistry, making it suitable for validating phospho-immunoreactivity in tissues.