ELISA Testing {Lab 13 - May 29, 2015}

    On the last day, we worked on ELISA testing or Enzyme Linked Immune Sorbent Essay. This test is used to detect the presents of antibodies. When you get sick, your body will produce antibodies for the antigens present in the disease. Being able to detect these antibodies is useful; as in AIDS, the virus hides where it cannot be detected inside our cells. However, the antibodies are not hiding so they can be detected.

Materials: 

• ELISA kit
• piquet
• buffer
• 12-well micro plate strip
• paper towels

Procedure:  

     First, we labeled the wells. The first 3 are going to be a positive control test, the next 3 are negative control test, the next three were sample 8, and the last 3 were sample 38. 

     We add 50µl of the antigen and let it sit for 5 minutes then wash. To wash we tip the wells over on the paper towels and gently tapped, then filled the wells with the buffer and again tipped them over and tapped out the liquid on fresh paper towels. After that we added the positive control, the negative control, serum 8, and serum 38 to the appropriate wells, waited 5 minutes and washed.  Repeating the same motion we added the secondary antibody, waited and washed. The final step was to add the enzyme substrate.

Results/applications: 

     The first 2 wells and the last 3 wells turned blue right away. So one of our positive controls was not done correctly as the 3^rd well should have also turned blue. These results would also indicate that the serum 38 is positive for antibodies and serum 8 is negative.

     This test also showed us how quick and simple it is to test for antibodies to detect diseases that are able to hide in our own cells in our body.