Hi. I’m a PhD student and I’ve been doing hemagglutination experiments to detect lectin activity in my samples (solubalised cells froma toxic species).

My samples lyse live blood cells so I’ve been using fixed cells (I’ve fixed them myself). But the fixed cells gave unclear results in the v-welled plates (I know its quite subjective with normal blood but with my fixed blood it was impossible). So i thought i’d look at the cells under the microscope to see if they are clumped. But is that what agglutination looks like? Clumped cells? Noone seems to be able to give me a staraight answer.

Also, whilst on the topic of fixed blood, where can you buy pre-fixed blood? And do people recommend buying it pre-fixed as its quite a long protocol to fix it and I and I don’t want to damage the blood too much so would rather an expert did it for me.

Thanks!