Biotin-streptavidin: how it works? - (Apr/25/2006 )

Hi everybody,
Would someone of you write me what is the biotin-streptavidin principle? How does this conjugate work? I am thinking about using flow cytometry for detection of my intracellular protein, unfortunately, the antibody is available only unconjugated or biotinylated…

Thank you.

Paja

Biotin is a vitamin that recognize with high affinity streptavidin.
Biotin can be coupled covalently to proteins. have a look on the attached file.

If you have a biotinylated antibody, you will need streptavidin coupled with FITC or PE or whatever fluorochrome you want, to detect the biotinylated antibody.