Question

ELISA Data Sheet

1) Please record the sample ID and the color present in each of the wells of your test strip (either blue or clear).

Well #	Sample ID	Well Color	Test Result (Positive or Negative)
1	Positive Control
2	Positive Control
3	Positive Control
4	Negative Control
5	Negative Control
6	Negative Control
7	T
8	T
9	T
10	J
11	J
12	J

2) Which students are positive for the disease antigen?

3) Which classmate(s) appear to be the original source(s) of the disease (see the ELISA Tracking list)? Note that you should be able to narrow it down to two people.

4) If a sample showed a negative result, does this mean that the person does not have the disease? Why might someone have gotten a negative result when they really do have the disease?

5) If a sample showed a positive result, was the person in "direct" contact with one of the originally infected students (answer from question #3)? If they were not, what does this tell you about disease transmission in a population?

6) Why were the tests run in triplicate?

Answer 1

Question 4- If a sample showed a negative result, does this mean that the person does not have the disease? Why might someone have gotten a negative result when they really do have the disease?

Answer 4- No, it is not necessary that if a sample showed a negative result, the person is not having the disease. These type of results are known as false negative results, when a person has a particular disease but the diagnostic test show a negative result. Most of the time false positive results occur due to technical error or may be the antibodies against the specific antigens are not yet formed due to which there was no interaction between antigen and antibody.

Question 5- If a sample showed a positive result, was the person in "direct" contact with one of the originally infected students (answer from question #3)? If they were not, what does this tell you about disease transmission in a population?

Answer-  If the pateint does not came in direct contact with the original infected student then the pateint might have got the disease through community transmission. Community transmission is the transmission of disease without getting in direct contact with the infected person. Instaed it is spread through indirect mode of transmission such as through touching infected surfaces, through air, through animal to person contact, eating or drinking contaminated/infected food or drinks.

Question 6- Why were the tests run in triplicate?

Answer- Tests are usually run in duplicates or triplicates to ensure the reproducibilty of the experiment, to identify any variation due to technical error in the data collected. Replicates in any experiment are used to ensure any varaibility associated with the experiment. If in triplicates the results are same with minor variation then the data is assumed to be much refine and could be used for calculating the standard deviation of any measurment data.