Agglutination and Precipitation
Agglutination and Precipitation
ENGINEERING-DEPARTMENT OF
BIOTECHNOLOGY ENGINEERING
2
Methods of Ag-Ab interaction
• Agglutination
• Precipitation
• Hemagglutination
• Radial-immunoassays
• ELISA
• Immunofluorescence
• Immunoblotting
• Lateral Flow assay
Agglutination reaction
• Similarly, if a person has type B blood, their red blood cells have the B
antigen on their surface. When their blood is mixed with anti-B antibodies,
the antibodies will bind to the B antigen, causing agglutination.
• If a person has type AB blood, their red blood cells have both the A and B antigens on
their surface. When their blood is mixed with either anti-A or anti-B antibodies, the
corresponding antibodies will bind to the respective antigens, causing agglutination.
• If a person has type O blood, their red blood cells do not have either the A or B
antigen on their surface. When their blood is mixed with both anti-A and anti-B
antibodies, there will be no agglutination because there are no corresponding
antigens present.
• Agglutination is a crucial step in blood typing as it allows for the accurate
identification of blood types, which is essential in blood transfusions and
other medical procedures where matching blood types is critical to ensure
safe and effective treatment.
Precipitation reaction
• Antigens involved need to be bi or polyvalent so that they can bind with multiple
antibodies which aid in the formation of the lattice.
• With increasing the amounts of ag , the lattice size becomes too small
to precipitate. This situation is called the POSTZONE (zone of ag
excess). Instead of reaching the plateau, the curve comes back down
to zero