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  • This Month in Biotechnology
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Drawing a bead on bioassays

Nature Biotechnology volume 18, page 480 (2000)Cite this article

With the goals of increasing throughput and reducing reagent costs, scientists are developing methods for performing bioassays in microscopically small volumes. But since the sensitivity of an assay is typically directly related to its reaction volume, working with microliter-scale volumes make signal detection a real challenge. On page 548, Hänninen et al. describe a method to boost the sensitivity of microvolume-scale immunoassays by using two-photon microscopy to scan polystyrene beads that bind the molecule to be studied. This concentrates the signal and reduces background, providing high sensitivity and wide dynamic range in reaction volumes as small as 2 μl. Since the method measures each microbead individually, it should be possible to design multiparameter tests with a mixture of beads with different bioactive coatings.

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Authors
  1. Natalie DeWitt
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DeWitt, N. Drawing a bead on bioassays. Nat Biotechnol 18, 480 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/75296

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