Dilution, serial

Describe how you would use a serial dilution to prepare 100 mL each of a series of standards with concentrations of... 

Methods to Detect and Quantitate Viral Agents in Fluids. In order to assess the effectiveness of membrane filtration the abihty to quantitate the amount of vims present pre- and post-filtration is critical. There are a number of techniques used. The method of choice for filter challenge studies is the plaque assay which utilizes the formation of plaques, localized areas in the cell monolayer where cell death caused by viral infection in the cell has occurred on the cell monolayer. Each plaque represents the presence of a single infectious vims. Vims quantity in a sample can be determined by serial dilution until the number of plaques can be accurately counted. The effectiveness of viral removal may be determined, as in the case of bacterial removal, by comparing the vims concentration in the input suspension to the concentration of vims in the effluent. 

The water analysis is incomplete unless the number of coliform bacteria present is determined as well. A multiple-tube fermentation technique can be used to enumerate positive presumptive, confirmed, and fecal coliform tests. Results of the tests are expressed in terms of the most probable number (MPN). That is, the count is based on a statistical analysis of sets of tubes in a series of serial dilutions. MPN is related to a sample volume of 100 ml. Thus, an MPN of 10 means 10 coliforms per 100 ml of water. 

For MPN determination, sterile pipettes calibrated in 0.1-ml increments are used. Other equipment includes sterile screw-top dilution bottles containing 99 ml of water and a rack containing six sets of five lactose broth fermentation tubes. A sterile pipette is used to transfer 1.0-ml portions of the sample into each of five fermentation tubes. This is followed by dispensing 0.1 ml into a second set of five. For the next higher dilution (the third), only 0.01 ml of sample water is required. This small quantity is very difficult to pipette accurately, so 1.0 ml of sample is placed in a dilution bottle containing 99 ml of sterile water and mixed. The 1.0-ml portions containing 0.01 ml of the surface water sample are then pipetted into the third set of five tubes. The fourth set receives 0.1 ml from this same dilution bottle. The process is then carried one more step by transferring 1.0 ml from the first dilution bottle into 99 ml of water in the second for another hundredfold dilution. Portions from this dilution bottle are pipetted into the fifth and sixth tube sets. After incubation (48 h at 35 C), the tubes are examined for gas production and the number of positive reactions for each of the serial dilutions is recorded. 

The filtered phase and suspended particulate phase of the 1 9 slurry represent the 100% concentration or 1,000,000 ppm. Serial dilutions of these two phases of drilling fluids are used in the test procedure to expose mysid shrimp (Mysidopsis bahia) for 96 hr and determine the LC. ... 

In order for the inverse of [C CT] to exist, C must have at least as many columns as rows. Since C has one row for each component and one column for each sample, this means that we must have at least as many samples as components in order to be able to compute equation [33]. This would certainly seem to be a reasonable constraint. Also, if there is any linear dependence among the rows or columns of C, [C CT] will be singular and its inverse will not exist. One of the most common ways of introducing linear dependency is to construct a sample set by serial dilution. 

Figure 3. Calibration curve for serial dilution of gasoline in pH=7 buffered water at an instrument-to-analyte distance of 25 m, using laboratory apparatus.

API Serial Dilution Method. The API serial dilution method is the most widely used method for the detection of microorganisms. Field test methods for estimating bacterial populations have been standardized. A standard method dealing with the dose-response (time-kill) testing for evaluating biocides has been established. Sampling methods are of special importance because effective sampling is essential to any successful analysis. 

Duplicate counts are made using serial dilutions up to 10-6 and drop plates. Solutions are then spotted onto blood agar plates and incubated at 37 °C for 18 hours after which the number of colony forming units is determined. To pass the BA Challenge Test there must be no growth from the aliquots taken at 15 minutes or more from the 1 400 and 1 1600 dilutions. 

The configuration can be expanded by adding other sample preparation instruments to facilitate automating other preparative steps that may intervene between SFE and the analytical instrument, e.g. solvent exchange, internal standard addition, serial dilutions for calibration curve generation, SPE for further cleanup of the extract output by SFE, derivatisation of components within the SFE extract, and many other (currently) manual-human intervention techniques. 

Three different lots of a standard 3.2-kb HCV RNA were serially diluted and quantified over a thousandfold range. The average signal per attomole of target varied by less than 20% among the three lots. 

The analytical sensitivities of the different quantitation methods have been compared using serial dilutions of patients specimens (Butterworth et al., 1996) and the Eurohep HBV DNA standards (Zaaijer et al., 1994). In both cases, bDNA was shown to be about 10-fold more sensitive than the liquid hybridization (Abbott) and the hybrid capture (Digene) assays. Using the Eurohep HB V standards, the detection limits were 2.5 X 106 genomes/ml for bDNA and 2.5 X 107 genomes/ml for both liquid hybridization (LH) and hybrid capture (HC) assays. 

The version 2.0 assay uses a different set of probes designed to hybridize to genotypes 1 to 6 with equal efficacy (Fig. 4). The new probe set not only enhanced the efficiency of binding to genotypic variants but also lowered the LOQ from 3.5 X 105 to 2 X 105 HCV RNA equivalents/ml (Detmer et al., 1996). The version 2.0 assay displayed almost a 600-fold dynamic range up to 1.2 X 108 RNA equivalents/ml. The LOQ was set at 2 X 105 to ensure a specificity of 95%. The assay was reproducible, with a mean CV of 14% for replicates of low-, middle-, and high-titer sera. Serial dilutions of quality level 1 RNA transcripts (Collins et al,... 

Figure 5.3 A convenient scheme for performing an inhibitor titration in 96-well format. Four compounds (1-4) are assessed in duplicate at each of 11 inhibitor concentrations. The inhibitor concentrations follow a threefold serial dilution from a maximum concentration of 1000 (molarity units nM, LlM, etc.). The right most column of wells is reserved for control samples. In this illustration four of the wells of column 12 are used for zero inhibitior positive controls, and the other four are used to establish the assay background as negative controls. Negative controls could represent any sample for which one knows that the enzymatic reaction has be abrogated. For example, the negative control wells could contain all of the reaction mixture components except the enzyme. See Chapter 4 for other potential forms of negative controls.

Table A3.1 Summary of methods for preparing a 3-fold, 2-fold, and 1.5-fold serial dilution set for inhibitor (or substrate) titration... 

Animal infectivity methods Some viruses do not cause recognizable effects in cell cultures but cause death in the whole animal. In such cases, quantification can only be done by some sort of titration in infected animals. The general procedure is to carry out a serial dilution of the unknown sample, generally at ten-fold dilutions, and samples of each dilution are injected into numbers of sensitive animals. After a suitable incubation period, the fraction of dead and live animals at each dilution is tabulated and an end point dilution is calculated. This is the dilution at which, for example, half of the injected animals die. Although such serial dilution methods are much more cumbersome and much less accurate than cell culture methods, they may be essential for the study of certain types of viruses. 

The compound 7-(4-chloro-benzyl)-2-(4-chloro-phenyl)-3,8a-dihydro-pyridazino[4,3-( ][l,3,4] thiadiazin-8-one 42 has been reported to be active against Bacillus Escherchia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa by a serial dilution method <2001IJB475>. Triazino-thiadiazines 24f, 25b, 25c, and 25f <2002IJH287> have been reported to be active against S. aureus-, sydnone derivatives of triazino-thiadiazine 24f <2002IJH287> are more reactive than coumarin derivatives. 

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