Ponceau S waste: Ponceau S staining for total protein normalization.

Normalization of Western blotting data is a critical step that is needed to reduce errors caused by unequal sample loading across lanes in a gel, inconsistent sample preparation, and variations due to experimental errors. Several papers have suggested that total protein normalization may be better than housekeeping protein normalization for Western blotting normalization. Ponceau S is the most commonly used stain for total protein normalization.