Quantitation of proteins by electroimmunoassay using a digitizer connected with a programmable calculator.

A system is described which considerably facilitates the reading and the subsequent conversion of measured values to protein concentrations, when proteins are quantitated by the electroimmunoassay a.m. Laurell (1972). The rocket heights of calibration samples and unknown samples are read by a cursor on a magnetic table (Digitizer, Hewlett Packard) and the values are automatically transferred to a programmable calculator (HP 9830 A, Hewlett Packard). It is programmed to calculate the protein concentration of samples by interpolation on a calibration curve fitted to the best polynomium of second degree by the method of least squares. The results and sequence numbers are automatically printed out from a printer (HP 9866 A, Hewlett, Packard), Reading and calculation of the results from one plate with 5 calibration samples (in duplicate) and 20 unknown samples are completed in less than 2 min. This is 10--15 times faster compared with a manual procedure where a hand-drawn calibration curve is used for interpolation.