Bioassays are experimental techniques in research used to measure the effects or potency of substances on living organisms or cells in a simple, understandable way for students.
What Is a Bioassay?
A bioassay is a special kind of test where scientists check how strong or effective a particular substance (like a drug, chemical, or hormone) is by looking at how it affects living things such as plants, animals, tissues, or cells. Instead of using just machines or chemical methods, bioassays require actual living creatures or cells to study the biological response.
How Bioassays Work
The main idea of a bioassay is to give different amounts of the substance to living subjects (like animals or cells) and observe what happens. The effect could be something simple, like survival or death, or more measured changes, like blood pressure or color changes in cells.
Stimulus: The substance being tested (drug, vitamin, pollutant, etc.).
Subject: What receives the substance (plant, animal, tissue, cells)
Response: The effect measured (growth, death, color, enzyme level).
Scientists often compare the effect of the test substance with a standard (a well-known reference) to check its relative strength or potency.
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