New answers tagged lab-techniques
7
This is a lateral flow assay.
[image source]
A sample is applied at one end of the strip and flows across to the other side by capillary action. It first encounters antibodies against the target antigen and which are conjugated to some reporter (in the image above, the reporter is colloidal gold). When the sample contacts these antibodies, they too will ...
6
I think @bob1's answer is good, and covers a lot of the bases.
One thing that I think is missing however is the use of a nuclear preparation as an initial step- my understanding is that this can help with a lot of the issues of phenolic/chitinous contaminants in difficult organisms like plants/fungi/insects. Here is one suggested protocol.
I would also ...
10
Insect samples are difficult to work with primarily because they contain a bunch of polysaccharides, like chitins, that are similar enough to nucleic acids that they can co-precipitate. Standard extraction procedures (e.g. Qiagen blood/tissue kits) do not handle this well without some modifications to get rid of these contaminants. The slimy aspect of your ...
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