Why do we need to wash the wells after every step?
Also asked, why is it necessary to wash the samples repeatedly in Elisa?
Because the assay uses surface binding for separation, several washes are repeated in each ELISA step to remove unbound material. During this process, it is essential that excess liquid is removed in order to prevent the dilution of the solutions added in the next assay step.
Likewise, people ask, what was the purpose of washing the plates between the addition of each reagent?
Between each step, the plate needs to be washed with a solution to remove any non-specific background, such as that caused by unbound proteins or antibodies. After the final wash step, the addition of an enzyme substrate produces a measurable change to indicate the quantity of antigen in the sample.
Why do you need to assay positive and negative control samples as well as your experimental samples? Controls are needed to make sure the assay is working correctly. If there are no positive controls and the sample is negative, we can't know if the sample was truly negative or if assay didn't work.