An automated Coomassie Blue method of measuring total protein in cultured skin fibroblasts using a random access analyzer, the Roche MIRA, was compared to a manual dye binding method using bicinchoninic acid. The automated Coomassie Blue method is in common use in many routine laboratories for measurement of total protein in urine and CSF, and was found by us to be significantly faster than a manual protein method, with an average assay time of 2 min per sample. In addition, intra- and inter-run precision were comparable for the automated and manual methods, and compared favourable with other automated methods. We recommend that where the MIRA apparatus is available, consideration be given to its use for protein quantitation of cell or tissue extracts.