Rat IL-13/Interleukin-13 ELISA Kit PicoKine™

Answer

A: for those Picokine® ELISAs where cell or tissue lysate is a validated sample type, sample preparation instructions for lysate can be found in the product insert. Components in lysate and lysis buffer can impact immunoreactivity, so if lysate is not a validated sample type, care must be taken in sample preparation and validation.

Answer

A: although the vials are bottled using aseptic techniques, heat-treated vials, and sterile stock solutions, they are not considered or guaranteed to be sterile. If sterile material is required for an experiment, the material can be filtered through a 0.2 micron filter designed for use with biological fluids.

Answer

A: Chelating agents such as EDTA, Heparin and Citrate can bind metal ions from the functional domain of IL-13 causing degradation of its protein structure. IL-13 may be denatured as a result and may compromise the assay's measurements. The chilating sites could also be too close to the epitopes a must for detection and block the antigen antibody reaction. We have tested the IL-13 ELISA, treating samples with various anticoagulants and decided that heparin or EDTA can be used for treatment of blood/plasma samples. Do not use other anticoagulents when collecting samples.

Answer

A: do not freeze and thaw whole blood. erythrocytes are fragile and, if frozen and thawed, will undergo hemolysis rendering the samples useless. To keep your blood samples to test IL-13 for a later time, you should let the blood clot in glass tubes and collect the serum to freeze for later use.

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A: The Picokine® ELISA Kits will generally run a 7-point standard curve, non-specific binding wells, and 39 samples in duplicate. this may depends upon the kit used so please refer to each datasheet for details.

Answer

A: The absolute O.D. values may change according to incubation time. The more you incubate the higher the O.D. values are going to be. what you should focus on is whether your sample O.D. values are statistically significantly higher than your blank values. regarding your protocol, you could extend your development time in the substrate incubation step to obtain higher O.D. values, as long as your negative controls' O.D. values are not increasing faster in proportion to your positive controls. typically, a sample with O.D. value 2 standard deviations higher than your negative controls can be considered positive. We calculate the sensitivity of this ELISA kit by changeing cutoff O.D. value, calculated as the average of 20 negative controls plus 2 standard deviations of the 20 negative controls, into a concentration. in other words, when we claim this IL-13 ELISA kit to have sensitivity of 1pg/ml, that means the minimum amount of IL-13 that can be declared/interpreted as positive by the above standard is 1pg/ml.

Answer

A: Unfortunately, Boster Bio has not routinely validated tissue homogenates as a sample type for ELISA kits. This does not mean that ELISA kits are not valid for other sample types than we have tested: it means further investigation is required. One will need to perform a spike and recovery study to determine if an unvalidated sample type will work with a particular kit. To perform a spike and recovery experiment, one should divide a sample into two aliquots. In one of the aliquots, the user should spike in a known amount of the kit standard. a dilution series is performed comparing the spiked versus the unspiked sample. Generally, samples with expected recovery and linearity between 80-120% are considered acceptable. This method can be used to validate any sample type that has not been assessd by Boster Bio. for a more detailed spike and recovery protocol, please contact technical support.
Note: acceptable ranges should be determined individually by each laboratory. Additionally, technical support can help determine if a buffer component is not compatible with a given ELISA kit. please see the Citations tab on the product webpage for peer-reviewed papers utilizing a wide range of sample types. We also have an innovator's reward program where if the user validates our ELISA kits in applications or samples previously not validated by Boster Bio or other users, and share such information with us by submit a review, we will reward the user's efforts with a free antibody or ELISA kit from our catalog. Biocompare.com will also give $20 Amazon giftcard as an additional reward, if the review is submitted there as well.

Answer

A: We have a web based ELISA curve fitting (4pl) and data analysis tool. Please give it a try: bosterbio.com/biology-research-tools/ELISA-data-analysis-online. You can also consult our article on ELISA data analysis: bosterbio.com/ELISA-data-analysis-instructions