I had never heard of VBS until I was looking into how to perform a decay accelerating assay to look at CFH function. In this assay that is the buffer the reaction takes place in, as opposed to PBS for many others. I am unfamiilar with VBS and don't really understand the need for a barbitol buffer for this?
Dear Lisa,
This buffer is the standard diluent for the Complement fixation test. It contains 145mM NaCl and 10mM barbital.
For more details, please read a paper in the following link:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2818707/
Hoping this will be helpful,
Rafik
Hi Lisa, Veronal (Barbital) was a popular buffer back in the 1950s-'60s. But it could be used as a recreational drug and now it is labeled as a controlled substance in the US.
Assays were then developed that did not use Veronal as the buffer.
veronal is (or has been) just want you want of a buffer substance: cheap stuff that does not interfere with your reaction and buffers at the right pH. Like other popular buffering compounds from 50 years ago (e.g. As-based cacodylate), it has been given up for toxicity or drug-related reasons and was replaced by the (sometimes less effective) phosphate- or tris-based buffering systems. I still was quite impressed during my studying time when our supervisor produced a huge glass jar with several kilograms of veronal out of the locked toxin cupboard (of course strictly for the practical course experiment, because they already did not get any replacement at the time due to legal restrictions).
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