This is followed by releasing and recovering
the specific antibody. In addition, this is a good technique
to increase the specificity of the antibodies by careful choice
of the protein attached to the agarose matrix. If the
antiserum was raised to a small molecule (hapten), it was
attached to a carrier molecule for the immunization. One can at this point attach the small molecule to a different and
non cross-reactive protein for attachment to the agarose and
exclude reactivity to the carrier.