Planning to run my assays this week, but not sure if I will be able to tomorrow. I want to prep as much as possible ahead of time, and was wondering if I could coat my plates with 10ug/mL antigen in bicarbonate buffer tonight, then use at a later time this week.
If so, should I keep the wells full of buffer until time of use, or dry them the next day then store at 4C until use?
There are a number of factors to consider and certainly there are ways to preserve and store plates for longer periods of time. However, in your case the key question is the stability of the antigen. If you know the antigen is stable, then you should be fine to store for several days in the coating buffer before proceeding with your ELISA. I have done this with several antigens and have never observed an issue with using the plate within a week. Hope this helps.
It depends on storage & stability of the antigen.
but if you don't have an idea about stability than dry and store at 2-8 temperature for storage.
I didn't face an issue during my experiment if antigen stored in buffer at least for a 10 days
I agree with above answers that it can depend on the stability of your antigen.
I used to coat my plate with the antigen overnight at 4C, block the plates and store them at -20C if I was unable to use it on the same day or if I had several plates to run. Again, you would have to optimize your assay for those conditions and for how long you can keep the plate in the freezer and get consistent results.
I would go with the second option.
Something else you can do if you do not feel like simply storing after washing is to add your blocking buffer and keep at 4C until you are ready for your experiment.
If your antigen is a large protein, you can store it at 4 Celsius after you desiccated it. In case you have access to a sealing bag (Ziploc type) you can use it to avoid cross-contamination. They can be stable for around 4 weeks.
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