12 Useful Detergents for Your Experiments

You might be designing a cell lysis experiment to extract your target protein in its native form, or you have isolated cell membranes from which you want to solubilize a protein for further analyses. In these situations, detergents are your best buddies. Here are the details of twelve detergents that you can consider for your experimental needs. They are summarized just below in table 1.

We have listed a bunch of helpful detergents and their relevant properties – whether they are classified as zwitterionic/ nonionic/ cationic/ anionic, and if they are used for denaturing proteins or not. We also have their critical micelle concentration (CMC) expressed as weight/ unit volume (w/v) or molarity. For the nondenaturing detergents that are used to solubilize membranes, you would definitely want to use them at a concentration greater than the CMC so that it forms micelles to disrupt the lipid layers in the membranes.

There is also a really handy resource if you want a quick recap about the properties of detergents that help with their functions in experiments.

Table 1. Detergents and their attributes

We have covered all you need to know about the basic concepts of how detergents work and why they are so important as reagents in bioscience experiments – in this article. Check it out if you want a detailed understanding of key parameters like critical micelle concentration (CMC), and how detergents are classified as anionic, cationic, zwitterionic or non-ionic.

This article is built around Table 1 shown above. We will briefly discuss the characteristics of these twelve detergents, which would be important for you when you are considering which detergents to use for your experiment.