Tipatge

Tipatge is a Catalan noun that refers to the act or process of assigning a type or category to something. It is used across disciplines to denote the determination or classification of a sample, organism, or individual, and can encompass both phenotypic and genotypic characteristics.

In medicine and transfusion science, tipatge sanguini, or blood typing, determines a person’s blood group and Rh status. Common systems include ABO and Rh. Serological tests with specific antibodies detect antigens on red blood cells. Accurate tipatge is essential for safe blood transfusions, organ transplantation, and the management of pregnancies at risk of hemolytic disease of the newborn.

In genetics and microbiology, tipatge refers to genetic or phenotypic typing used for identification or epidemiology. Genetic typing (tipatge genètic) includes DNA profiling, STR or SNP analysis, and increasingly whole-genome sequencing, to identify individuals or establish relatedness. Microbial typing classifies bacterial or viral strains (serotyping, MLST, PFGE, whole-genome sequencing) to track outbreaks and monitor transmission.

In broader contexts, tipatge can denote the creation of typologies or the categorization of objects, populations, or phenomena according to defined characteristics, such as sociological typologies or linguistic classification. The term therefore covers a range of methods and applications, all centered on assigning a defined type to a given subject.