Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) for Bradford Assay

Transcript

The question we're going to answer today is why bovine serum albumin or BSA, is used commonly for Bradford assay. For the determination of protein concentration in unknown samples by Bradford assay, it is important to prepare a standard curve for each assay. However, standards of the protein to be quantified are often unavailable or very expensive. In these cases, one needs a purified protein of known concentration that will produce an average color response curve. This is where BSA comes into play. BSA is a protein derived from the blood serum of domestic cattle. It is affordable and easily produced. It also remains stable at room temperature for up to three weeks making this the ideal candidate for Bradford assays as well as many other bioassays.