Protein phosphorylation  of enzymes is an essential process in regulating the cell physiology as the cell responds to a variety of biological stimuli . It is also one of the most commonly studied posttranslational modification.  In a recently published paper Aguilar et al  have compared the use of traditional western blotting (WB) to Incell westerns (ICW) as a method to quantify the phopho proteins. They have concluded that though both the techniques yield comparable biological data, ICW may infact have certain advantages over the standard western blotting.

Advantages of ICW over WB:

• High throughput
• Improved precision and reduced sample preparation requirements - great for high throughput or low quantity samples.
• Less labor intensive

Disadvantages of ICW over WB:

• Need to grow the cells.
• Cannot purify the protein, nor can do concentration or stoichiometric analysis.

References:

Aguilar HN, Zielnik B, Tracey CN, Mitchell BF., "Quantification of rapid Myosin regulatory light chain phosphorylation using high-throughput in-cell Western assays: comparison to Western immunoblots", .PLoS One. 2010 Apr 1;5(4):e9965.