ELISA buffer preservative - (Jan/19/2011 )

I am making my own ELISA buffers and wish to steer clear from sodium azide as a preservative and was wondering if others have tried the friendlier preservatives such as Proclin etc and if they are any good? Thanks for any help.

aldann on Wed Jan 19 06:18:59 2011 said:

Hola, When I did ELISAs, I made my own solutions too.Azide was added to the antibodies solutions to mantain them at 4ºC and avoid freezing and tawing. Here or in any other forum anyone says that azide (0.01%, I think remember that it ´s used) inhibits horseraddish peroxidase that is the conjugated with the 2dary antibody and the responsable of the colour reaction to measure.Anyway you can prepare each time the amount of ab. solutions that you need for the occuped wells, but if you want prepare an stock of ab.solutions (mainly secondarys) make aliquots of different volumes according at the used in each experiment and mantain frosten. If the first ab has azide it is eliminated in the repeated plate washes. Buena suerte

Proclin, kathon and thimerosal are also OK.