Affinitymagnetic separation (AMS) is a laboratory tool that can efficiently isolate

bacteria Bacteria (; : bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one Cell (biology), biological cell. They constitute a large domain (biology), domain of Prokaryote, prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micr ...

l cells out of body fluid or cultured cells. It can also be used as a method of quantifying the

pathogenicity In biology, a pathogen (, "suffering", "passion" and , "producer of"), in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ. The term ...

of food, blood or feces. Another laboratory separation tool is the immunomagnetic separation (IMS), which is more suitable for the isolation of

eucaryotic The eukaryotes ( ) constitute the domain of Eukaryota or Eukarya, organisms whose cells have a membrane-bound nucleus. All animals, plants, fungi, seaweeds, and many unicellular organisms are eukaryotes. They constitute a major group of life f ...

cells.

Technique

Host recognition of bacteriophages occur via bacteria-binding proteins that have strong binding affinities to specific

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residue (biochemistry), residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including Enzyme catalysis, catalysing metab ...

carbohydrate A carbohydrate () is a biomolecule composed of carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O) atoms. The typical hydrogen-to-oxygen atomic ratio is 2:1, analogous to that of water, and is represented by the empirical formula (where ''m'' and ''n'' ...

structures on the surface of the bacterial host. Bacteria-binding proteins derived from

bacteriophage A bacteriophage (), also known informally as a phage (), is a virus that infects and replicates within bacteria. The term is derived . Bacteriophages are composed of proteins that Capsid, encapsulate a DNA or RNA genome, and may have structu ...

coating

paramagnetic Paramagnetism is a form of magnetism whereby some materials are weakly attracted by an externally applied magnetic field, and form internal, induced magnetic fields in the direction of the applied magnetic field. In contrast with this behavior, ...

beads will bind to specific cell components present on the surface of host thus ''capturing'' the cells and facilitate the concentration of these bead-attached cells. The concentration process is created by a magnet placed on the side of the test tube bringing the beads to it. Due to the

phage-ligand technology The Phage-ligand technology is a technology to detect, bind, and remove bacteria and bacterial toxins by using highly specific bacteriophage-derived proteins. Origins The host recognition of bacteriophages occurs via bacteria-binding proteins tha ...

, AMS is superior to the antibody based immunomagnetic separation (IMS) on sorting bacterial cells.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Affinity Magnetic Separation Laboratory techniques Molecular biology