How to run great 2D Gels

Learn how to run great 2D Gels from start to finish.

Bio-Rad’s PROTEAN i12 IEF system wins Laboratory Equipment’​s Reader’s Choice Award

Hercules, CA — March 13, 2012 — Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc.’s PROTEAN i12 IEF system won a Laboratory Equipment Readers’ Choice Award in the Basic Lab Equipment category. Theaward will be presented today at a special reception during the Pittcon Conference & Expo 2012 being held at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL.

“The PROTEAN i12 IEF system individually controls each of its 12 lanes, allowing researchers to generate reproducible 2-D gels in less time and with total confidence,” said Renee Lemaire-Adkins, Bio-Rad Marketing Manager, Lab Separations Division. “It is a great honor to have our IEF technology recognized by the researchers and laboratory professionals who compose Laboratory Equipment’s readership.”

The 4th annual award celebrates “excellence in product design and performance for the tools and materials used by scientists and engineers in research laboratories.” Laboratory Equipment readers voted for products online.

The PROTEAN i12 IEF system is the industry’s only isoelectric focusing (IEF) system designed to simultaneously run up to 12 immobilized pH gradient (IPG) strips in 12 independently programmed lanes, which allows users to confidently run 12 different conditions at one time. Although many available IEF systems have multiple lanes, all but the PROTEAN i12 system depend on a single power supply, allowing only one set of conditions to be run at a time.

By independently controlling voltage and current levels in each lane, the PROTEAN i12 IEF cell allows users to optimize different sample and pH conditions and run samples from different experiments simultaneously.The independent lane control prevents lane-to-lane sample interference, resulting in faster, more accurate, reliable, and reproducible focusing.

Visit http://bit.ly/proteani12pr or Bio-Rad’s Pittcon Booth #1412 to learn more about the PROTEAN i12 IEF system. You can find more about the Laboratory Equipment Reader’s Choice Award at http://bit.ly/2012readerschoice.

Five great application tips for proteomics research

Here are some great application tips from Bio-Rad Laboratories for those researchers working with proteins:

• Generally, the best method for keeping a protein in solution is to add any combination of nonionic detergents, zwitterionic detergents, and chaotropic agents to the sample mixture. Also use reducing agents such as DTT and DTE (less than 20 mM) to decrease disulfide bond formation between proteins.
• When working with membrane or insoluble proteins, increase the amount of SDS in the equilibration and running buffers (up to 0.2%) to allow the proteins to effectively migrate out of the IPG strip.
• To reduce the amount of SDS in samples generated by preparative SDS-PAGE, substitute the elution buffer with one that does not contain SDS.
• Nucleic acid contamination is a common cause of horizontal gel streaking. Treat samples with nucleases to remove nucleic acids prior to isoelectric focusing.
• Never heat samples in urea-containing buffers. The urea rapidly breaks down to carbamic acid and carbamylates the proteins, modifying their charge. Urea breakdown and subsequent protein carbamylation is the cause of charge trains on 2-D gels. A charge train is a series of spots on a 2-D gel that are of different pIs and the same size.

For more great tips visit www.expressionproteomics.com

An sneak peak at an innovation in proteomics

This cute video gives you a pretty good view of Bio-Rad’s new Protean i12 IEF Cell. To learn more about the product visit www.bio-rad.com/i12

PROTEAN IEF i12 Intro Video from Erik Westby on Vimeo.

Bio-Rad Launches New IEF Cell

Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. announces the launch of the PROTEAN i12 IEF system, the industry’s only isoelectric focusing (IEF) system that is designed to simultaneously run up to 12 immobilized pH gradient (IPG) strips in 12 independently programmed lanes.

For the best 2-D gel electrophoresis results, researchers optimize their sample preparation and first-dimension isoelectric focusing conditions to ensure adequate separation of complex samples. Because the optimal IEF conditions for different protein samples can vary significantly, each set of conditions must be tested separately. This can be a time-consuming and tedious process.