ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on future directions for immunoassay. The impact of the development of the immunoassay is clearly evidenced by the number used as standard methodologies in quality assessment, medical testing, diagnostics as well as a plethora of other laboratory settings. Traditional style immunoassays based on the 96-well microtitre plate format are commonplace in analytical laboratories and, with the introduction of robotics in recent years, have become more and more automated thus increasing assay throughput. Cell display methods employ various cell systems, either prokaryotic or eukaryotic, for expression and selection of antibody fragments demonstrating desirable characteristics. Random mutagenesis involves the random change of any amino acid in the antibody gene sequence. Perhaps the most well known method for random mutagenesis is error-prone Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). Error-prone PCR employs low-fidelity polymerases and/or conditions which favour mis-incorporation of nucleotides to create libraries of random mutants.
