CYTOTOXICITY TEST

 WHAT IS CYTOTOXICITY?
         Cytotoxicity is the quality of being toxic to cells. Cells exposed to a cytotoxic compound can respond in a number of ways. The cells may undergo necrosis, in which they lose membrane integrity and die rapidly as a result of cell lysis; they can stop growing and dividing; or they can activate a genetic program of controlled cell death, termed apoptosis.

MEASURING CYTOTOXICITY

      There are many ways to measure cytotoxicity, but most involve assessment of cell membrane integrity. Membrane integrity can be evaluated by using vital dyes (such as trypan blue or propidium iodide), by protease biomarkers, with MTT or MTS redox potential assays, or by measuring ATP content. Many of these assays involve colorimetric, fluorescence, or luminescence detection.

Atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) 

is a spectroanalytical procedure for the quantitative determination of chemical elements using the absorption of optical radiation (light) by free atoms in the gaseous state.

In analytical chemistry the technique is used for determining the concentration of a particular element (the analyte) in a sample to be analyzed. AAS can be used to determine over 70 different elements in solution or directly in solid samples used in pharmacology, biophysics and toxicology research.

Atomic absorption spectroscopy was first used as an analytical technique, and the underlying principles were established in the second half of the 19th century by Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and Gustav Robert Kirchhoff, both professors at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.^[1]

The modern form of AAS was largely developed during the 1950s by a team of Australian chemists. They were led by Sir Alan Walsh at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Division of Chemical Physics, inMelbourne, Australia.^[2][3]

Principles

The technique makes use of absorption spectrometry to assess the concentration of an analyte in a sample. It requires standards with known analyte content to establish the relation between the measured absorbance and the analyte concentration and relies therefore on the Beer-Lambert Law
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