Question

What is the potential application of agglutination reaction?

A)Protein purification B) Blood typing C) Measuring concentration of cytokines D) all of the answers are correct

Answer 1

Ans: The answer is (C) Measuring concentration of Cytokines.

Explanation:

When a particulate antigen and an antibody reacts, it forms visible clumps.This phenomena is called as agglutination and those antibodies which produces such reaction are called as agglutinins.Agglutination reaction is primarily used to determine the concentration of a specific antibody in a patient's immune system. When suspended particulate antigen is added to a series of tubes containing patient's immune serum,the antibody titer in the serum is given by the reciprocal of highest dilution which shows the agglutination of the particulate antigen.

Cytokines are molecular messengers made up of proteins and produced by the immune cells.They promote or inhibits the proliferation and functions of other immune cells and hence are pro-inflammatory or anti-inflammatory. Blood cells releases number of cytokines and thus by blood agglutination process we can find the concentration of cytokines in plasma and hence the level of various cytokines in a persons immune serum.

Explanation for why the other options are not the correct answer option:

(A) Protein purification - Protein purification is done through 4 different methods, (i)Precipitation (ii)Extraction (iii)Ultracentrifugation (iv) Chromatography

(B) Blood Typing - Blood typing is the method to determine the type of blood group present in our body.The test used for blood typing is called as ABO typing.