Ultra Small ImmunoGold Reagents
Aurion Ultra Small Immunogold Reagents are prepared with subnanometer gold particles. These particles have far less influence on the adsorbed antibodies or detecting molecules, and consequently the conjugates behave as though they are uncoupled. In conjunction with the highly efficient and easy-to-use R-Gent SE-LM and SE-EM silver enhancement reagents, the Ultra Small Immunogold Reagents are the best choice for any application.
Reduction of the gold particle size provides Ultra Small Immunogold Reagents with fundamentally different characteristics when compared with conjugates built around larger particles. While the Conventional Immunogold Reagents can be thought of as particles coated with proteins, Ultra Small Immunogold Reagents are proteins coated with one or more gold particles. With this structure, both the overall size of the conjugates, as well as steric hindrance are decreased.
Aurion offers Ultra Small Immunogold Reagents with an average gold particle diameter of 0.8 nm or less. These ultra small gold particles can be visualized directly in high angle annular dark-field-scanning TEM. However, the gold signal is normally visualized after increasing the particle diameter with silver enhancement. The reagents can be used in electron and light microscopy as well as in blotting experiments. The universal applicability makes it easy to compare results obtained with different procedures.
AURION Ultra Small Immunogold Reagents contain 60-80 µg of specific protein/ml for IgG conjugates. F(ab’)2, Fab and biotinylated albumin conjugates contain equimolar amounts of conjugated protein. The average gold cluster diameter is less than 0.8 nm.
AURION Ultra Small Immunogold Reagents are used in conjunction with AURION R-Gent SE-EM or SE-LM silver enhancement reagents, developed for electron microscopy and light microscopy/immunoblotting respectively.
The reagents are supplied in PBS with 1% Bovine Serum Albumin and 15 mM NaN3. The activity of each lot is determined using a dot-spot test system as described by Moeremans et al., J. Immunol. Methods, 74, (1984), 353.
Technical Tips
Ultra Small ImmunoGold Application Instructions
Why Ultra Small Gold Conjugates