Vitro Scient Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) is a high purity, lyophilized “Fraction V” powder. The albumin is isolated from other plasma protein products and lipids by a unique proprietary, non-solvent procedure.

Bovine serum albumin (also known as BSA or “Fraction V”) is a serum albumin protein isolated from cows. Rockland produces BSA in various formats for use in immunology, biochemistry and biotechnology. BSA immunoassay applications include ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay), immunoblots (western blot and dot blot), and immunocytochemistry (immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence microscopy). Bovine serum albumin (often from a fetal bovine source) is also used as a nutrient in cell and microbial culture. In molecular biology BSA is used to stabilize some restriction enzymes during digestion of DNA and to prevent adhesion of the enzyme to reaction tubes, pipet tips, and other vessels.  BSA is considered to be a universal blocking reagent in many applications. This is because BSA does not affect the functions of other proteins (enzymes) that do not need it for stabilization. BSA is also commonly used to determine the quantity of other proteins, by comparing an unknown quantity of protein to known amounts of BSA in, for instance, the Bradford Protein Assay. BSA is used because of its stability to increase signal in assays, its lack of effect in many biochemical reactions, and its low cost, since large quantities of it can be readily purified from bovine blood, a byproduct of the cattle industry.