Most laboratories have implemented some form of multiplex assays, whether it’s in the form of a microarray, qPCR, planar array, or a suspension array. These methods have replaced many standard techniques such as Southern/Northern blots, agarose gel-electrophoresis of traditional PCR products, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs). Most labs will benefit from the acceleration of data collection, the savings in money, and preservation of sample. However, there are labs or projects where a multiplexed assay may not make sense.
Here are the top three examples of why multiplexing might not be a good fit for your research:
- A single biomarker tells the whole story – There are some biomarkers that tell a pretty good story as a single-plex assay. For example, troponin alone is a fairly good marker of heart injury sustained during a heart attack.
- Sample is not limited – If you’re working exclusively with tissue culture samples, sample may not be a limiting factor at all, especially if your marker is present in the tissue culture supernatant.
- Time is not limited – Of course time is critical to everyone, but some projects or samples have less priority and monitoring biomarkers one-at-a-time can be done at leisure. Or it’s a good training exercise for new members of the lab. It also provides perspective on the “old way of doing things” before there were kits/instrumentation/etc. to perform quick data on multiple genes or proteins of interest. This is especially useful for those younger lab members who don’t realize how good they have it now, and how painfully slow testing could be in the past.
There may be other parameters to consider when deciding upon using a multiplexed assay. If your lab is limited by sample volume or you need to look at multiple biomarkers in a model system, then multiplexing might be a good choice for your lab.
Why has or hasn’t your lab adopted multiplexed assays? How has that decision impacted your lab?