ABSTRACT
There are varous physical and physico-chemical pitfalls that can drastically diminish the value of the observed kinetic rate constant of attachment (ka) in protein adsorption to solid surfaces, which are frequently ignored or disregarded. These are of two different categories:
1. Pitfals pertaining to mass transport and to steric hindrance among dissolved protein molecules causing competition for adsorption sites, both of which can be avoided by taking simple experimental precautions, and:
2. Usually unsuspected pitfalls that are inherent in (often unavoidable) experimental conditions, but which can be taken into account, to yield data which allow the derivation of the real molecular ka value. Category 1 pitfalls are treated in this Section; category 2 pitfalls are treated in the two following Sections.
