Why should I use gold standard criteria in SpotCheck?

SpotCheck gold standards are designed to objectively check whether a test gel has been run to an acceptable standard. By setting the criteria that a test gel must meet, investigators will be informed whether or not their gel is of sufficient quality, avoiding a subjective decision by the investigators themselves.

What criteria should I use in my gold standard?

This will depend on how you have set up your gold standard. If you've included every spot on the gels in the gold standard then you might need less stringent criteria than if your gold standard includes only a subset of spots that correspond to consistently behaving proteins.

See here for more information on how SpotCheck uses these criteria to assess your test gels.