Radioactive tracer such as a cell or tissue, or as a flow tracer to track fluid flow. Radioactive tracers are also used to determine the location of fractures created by hydraulic fracturing in natural gas production. Radioactive tracers form the basis of a variety of imaging systems, such as, PET scans, SPECT scans and technetium scans. Radiocarbon dating uses the naturally occurring carbon-14 isotope as an isotopic label. Isotopes of a chemical element differ only in the mass number. For example, the isotopes of hydrogen can be written as H, H and H, with the mass number at top left. When the
Isotope-coded affinity tag of the column. For the quantitative comparison of two proteomes, one sample is labeled with the isotopically light (d0) probe and the other with the isotopically heavy (d8) version. To minimize error, both samples are then combined, digested with a protease (i.e., trypsin), and subjected to avidin affinity chromatography to isolate peptides labeled with isotope-coded tagging reagents. These peptides are then analyzed by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). The ratios of signal intensities of differentially mass-tagged peptide pairs are quantified to determine the relative levels of proteins in the two samples. Isotope-coded affinity tag An Isotope-coded affinity tag (ICAT) is an