Lateral Flow Colloidal Gold-Based Immunoassay for Pesticide

In recent years, immunochromatographic lateral flow test strips are used as a popular diagnostic tool. There are two formats (noncompetitive and competitive) in gold-based immunoassay. Noncompetitive gold-based immunoassay also called sandwich assay is applied for the detection of large molecular mass. For small molecular mass such as pesticide, competitive format of lateral flow colloidal gold-based immunoassay is described in this chapter. The preparation of gold colloidal and the conjugation between antibody and gold colloidal are described. Hi-flow plus nitrocellulose membranes are separately coated with goat anti-rabbit IgG (control line) and hapten-OVA conjugate (test line). Thus, the degree of intensity of color of the test line is the reverse of the concentration of pesticide in the sample and the visual result is immediately observable. Colloidal gold-based immunoassay can also be applied for multianalysis in one test strip if the detected targets show different physico-chemical properties and their haptens show great differences in chemical structure.