coating microplates for ELISA - Questions about coating (Sep/09/2005 )
I would appreciate if anyone could let me know if there is any problem in leaving a plate coated with an antibody during the whole weekend. I am almost new in this matter. I will perform an ELISA on Monday.Thanks a lot. 
The coating step is allowed to go to completion. Leaving it for longer makes no difference at all. The only thing to be aware of is contamination and evaporation so keep them at 4 degrees and cover them with plate seal.
This will sound amazingly ignorent, but what is plate seal? I maybe know it by another name, but we use Sarin wrap to cover our plates.
Plate seal is just a sticky bit of plastic which is the size of a 96 well plate. They should stop anything being transferred between wells and I guess reduce evaporation. We buy our plate seals from Alpha laboratories (Cat. no. LW2770) if you want to buy them.
This will sound amazingly ignorent, but what is plate seal? I maybe know it by another name, but we use Sarin wrap to cover our plates.
Sarran wrap will do. Another possibility is Parafilm.
cover plates with plate seal, parafilm, saran wrap etc store at 4C.
Many off the shelf kits have plates that are blocked with bsa and coated with a sucrose solution which protects the ab/ag.
Hi,
I actually keep my coated plates in saturating solution up to 6 months.
I add in my saturating solution a bit of azide (0.01%)
and I make sure that I don't have evaporation by covering the plates with parafilm (verify that it's cell sealed).
Hi,
would it be possible to take this even a step further and include blocking (with BSA) after coating and THEN store the empty plate (sealed and at 4 oC)?.
kind regards,
Walter
would it be possible to take this even a step further and include blocking (with BSA) after coating and THEN store the empty plate (sealed and at 4 oC)?.
kind regards,
Walter
You can stop at blocking stage, then store them in 4 degree in the blocking solution. Remember to wrap them in wrap and put in a non-transparent box.