How specific is an ELISA plate in binding proteins?

[hanhan2008]

Can these plates really only bind proteins, not lipids or other things in cell lysate? How?
Thanks, Hanhan

[weesper]

well antibodies can of course be raised against DNA, lipidmolecules etc as well and in that sense it all depends on which antibodies your elisa plate was coated with in other words which is specificity is. in any experiment there are false positives (ie binders that are not those of the predicted specificity) but you diminish with frequent washes of the plate and usually non-specific binders are of a lower affinity and washed away even all the other stuff thats in your lysate