Nurturing Life Sciences
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#Unit 13. Methods in Biology
Diphenyltetrazolium bromide, a yellow tetrazole is reduced by metabolically active cells to form insoluble, purple formazan dye crystals detected at 570nm
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The more metabolically active cells that are present in the culture, the more formazan will be generated, and so this assay provides a readout of the number of live cells as a function of time.
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The MTT assay can measure cell proliferation or cell death.
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bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) is rapidly phosphorylated and incorporated in its place into newly synthesized DNA hence BrdU is used to detect replicating cells.
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BrdU can CAUSE light induced cell death.
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If cells that have incorporated a high level of BrdU are exposed to light, they will photolyse; this has been used to selectively kill newly dividing cells.