While detergents can be used to extract, solubilize, and manipulate (disrupt or form) membrane proteins from biological membranes for subsequent biochemical and physical characterization, and are useful in controlling protein crystallization and preventing nonspecific binding in affinity purification and immunoassay procedures, they can also be one of your greatest foes in the laboratory.
When doing biological applications in the laboratory, it is essential that you have your phosphate buffers available at all times. This is of extreme importance since most biological applications are very sensitive to changes in pH, and these buffers are very effective in keeping the pH range of cellular fluids within the normal range (6.9 to 7.4).
The use of peptides for the generation of antibodies against specific peptides has become an essential tool in proteomic research. However, while they are designed to be good epitopes by themselves, these immunogenic peptides or haptens are too small (size ranges from 1000-2000 Daltons) to elicit a strong antibody response, even when emulsified in an appropriate adjuvant.
The ability to accurately quantify protein concentration is the key to a successful laboratory workflow, and is often required prior to processing protein samples for isolation, separation, and analysis. To determine the total protein concentration in a sample, one of the first factors to consider is the selection of an appropriate protein assay method. However, since there are a wide variety of protein assays available, you need to take a number of factors (e.g. the accuracy required and the amount and purity of the protein available) into account to make sure that you are using the most suitable assay for your application.
Topics: Protein Estimation, Protein Detection
