Prior to the introduction of liquid scintillation counting, a primary route of radiotracer analysis was to combust the organic material and detect the 14CO2 so generated in a gas phase proportional counter. Many protocols still…

Working with radioactive isotopes requires diligent attention to safety measures, in order to avoid hazardous exposure(s). Because radioactivity cannot be detected without instrumentation, spills can easily be spread through and even out of the lab…

Samples of animal or plant tissue are rarely thin or small enough to allow for full counting efficiency. Homogenization of such samples will allow them to be dispersed into a cocktail, but processing large numbers…

A common radiotracer technique is to precipitate macromolecules (protein & DNA) with TCA or some other strong denaturant, collect the precipitate on a filter and count it. Often such procedures give variable results, depending upon…

In a typical TLC experiment, the radioactivity is detected at two points: after TLC it is analyzed by autoradiography, to locate radioactive spots. These spots are then scraped off of the plate and counted to…

An aspect of LSC which must be considered in experimental design, is waste disposal. Unlike solid scintillation, LSC adds components to the sample increasing the volume of radioactive material by up to 1000 fold. The…

Liquid scintillation counting of discrete samples is conceptually straightforward. A sample is mixed with an appropriate volume of scintillation cocktail, and the mixture is placed in an LSC vial and counted. For some samples no…