MTS assay

MTS [3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-5-(3-carboxymethoxyphenyl)-2-(4-sulfophenyl)-2H-tetrazolium] is a new kind of tetrazolium salts, it can be reduced by viable cells to generate formazan products that are directly soluble in cell culture medium. For these improved tetrazolium reagents, the usual protocol is simply to add them to the culture medium and read the absorption of the reduced product at an appropriate time. This approach eliminates a liquid handling step during the assay procedure, thus it obviously saves time and eliminates potential errors such as cell loss that can occur when removing culture medium and subsequently solubilizing cells.