Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I would like to know what are the plausible reasons as to why the HRPO-conjugated donkey anti-human immunoglobulin and the chromogen/substrate were added from the right to the left of the microtiter plate?

Is your question about a science fair project that you are doing? We cannot answer the question accurately without some more information.

96-well microtiter plates are labeled from left to right with the numbers 1-12 for the columns. The rows are labeled with the letters A-H from top to bottom. Normally, a plate would be loaded starting at the left and moving right, but some people do what is called 'serpentine' loading where they pipet left to right for row A, then right to left for row B, left to right for row C, right to left for row D--and so on.

When a machine reads the plate it may read in serpentine fashion because this requires less movement of the read head; but when the data are shown, the reads follow the instructions that the user input to the machine.

If you need more clarification, let me know.

Sybee

SciB wrote:Is your question about a science fair project that you are doing? We cannot answer the question accurately without some more information.

96-well microtiter plates are labeled from left to right with the numbers 1-12 for the columns. The rows are labeled with the letters A-H from top to bottom. Normally, a plate would be loaded starting at the left and moving right, but some people do what is called 'serpentine' loading where they pipet left to right for row A, then right to left for row B, left to right for row C, right to left for row D--and so on.

When a machine reads the plate it may read in serpentine fashion because this requires less movement of the read head; but when the data are shown, the reads follow the instructions that the user input to the machine.

If you need more clarification, let me know.

Sybee

Hi, this question is related to an experiment that I am doing. at first, they loaded the antigens from columns 1-12 (left to right). however, when loading the substrate and antibodies they loaded it from columns 12-1 (right to left) instead why is that so??

I don't know the answer to your question. Who are the "they" that you are referring to? You could ask them. I always work left to right, except as I said when doing a serpentine assay in an older plate reader that reads each well sequentially back and forth. It doesn't matter which way you add the reagents as long as you don't lose your place. I like to use a repeating pipet so that I don't have to refill it each time and I can keep track of the position more easily.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you do get an answer to your question.

Sybee