Assay
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Assay (disambiguation).
An assay is a procedure where a property of a system or object is measured.
There are numerous types of assays, such as an antigen capture assay, bioassay, competitive protein binding assay, four-point assay, immunoassay, microbiological assay, stem cell assay, and many others.
Contents |
[edit] Molecular biology assays
Assays are regularly utilized in molecular biology scientific research laboratories.
[edit] DNA
Assays for studying interactions of proteins with DNA include:
[edit] RNA
[edit] Protein
- Bicinchoninic acid assay (better known as the BCA assay)
- Bradford protein assay
- Lowry protein assay
- Secretion assay
- ultraviolet spectroscopy
[edit] Cytotoxicity
Assays for studying how toxic a compound is to cells:
- MTT assay
- SRB (Sulforhodamine B) assay
[edit] Viruses
- Viral plaque assay: Used to calculate the number of viruses present in a sample. This technique requires counting the number of plaques formed by a virus sample, from which the actual virus concentration can be determined.
[edit] Cellular secretions
A wide range of cellular secretions (say, a specific antibody or cytokine) can be detected using the ELISA technique. The number of cells which secrete those particular substances can be determined using a related technique, the ELISPOT assay.
[edit] Drugs
[edit] Environmental contaminants
[edit] Coins
An assayer is often assigned to each mint to determine and assure that all coins produced there have the correct content or purity of each metal in them. This is particularly important with gold and silver coins.
