My Biotech Life

I’ve been jumping around different subjects these last days mainly because I have a fair amount of interest in most of the areas involved. This time I’m going to talk about the Ouchterlony double immuno diffusion simulator I found a couple of months ago.

Yep, Immunology is a field that I have high interest in and there just seems to be so much still to be discovered.

For those that don’t know what Ouchterlony double immuno diffusion is, here’s a quick definition:

A technique designed to establish the identity of unknown protein samples based on the interaction between antibodies and antigens in solution. Anti-serum, antigens, and/or an unknown substance are each placed into separate wells and allowed to diffuse radially outward through an agarose gel.
As the expanding rings come in contact with each other, insoluble antigen/antibody complexes precipitate out of solution forming readily recognizable patterns. (in Alzforum.org)

OK, so getting back to the simulator, I’ve found it to be a great tool to understand how this technique works. And it’s obviously less time consuming and less expensive.

More information on Ouchterlony can be found here:
http://www.edvotek.com/pdfs/270.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouchterlony_double_immuno_diffusion
http://www.snv.jussieu.fr/bmedia/ATP/immu2.htm (in French but VERY COMPLETE)

• My week of Just Science 2007