Biochemical Reagents

Sodium taurocholate is the sodium salt of taurocholic acid, a bile acid composed of cholic acid and taurine. It has many microbiological uses, and is a well-known recipe component of MacConkey agar.

It is also often used to solubilize lipids and membrane proteins, as well as functioning as an activator during studies involving different types of lipases.

Spermidine trihydrochloride is a polyamine that inhibits neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) and binds and precipitates DNA. It may be used to purify DNA binding proteins. Additionally, spermidine stimulates T4 polynucleotide kinase activity. It is involved in growth, development, and the stress response in plants.

Spermine is a polyamine derived from spermidine. It is involved in the cellular metabolism of all eukaryotic cells, as well as being vital to some bacteria.

Due to its polycationic nature, nonviral gene therapy applications involving spermine have shown promising results. This has had a positive impact in cancer research involving the lungs.

Gene transfer within the lungs is met with many obstacles due to inflammatory and immunological responses. Using spermine as a gene delivery vehicle to transfect living cells has bypassed some of these obstacles, showing higher gene expression.

Dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) is a very polar organic compound that is useful in organic chemistry for solubilizing organic and inorganic compounds. DMSO is also used as a cryoprotectant for cell media, preventing the formation of ice crystals which would otherwise damage cells. DMSO can be used in PCR reactions to inhibit the self-complementation of DNA or PCR primers and increase amplification, especially for DNA sequences which have GC rich sequences.

GoldBio's DMSO is filter sterilized through a 0.2 μg filter. Sterile DMSO is ideal for working with tissue culture or cell culture in which there is a need for eliminating all potential sources of contamination.

Thiazolyl blue tetrazolium bromide (often called MTT) is a common dye used in Cell Proliferation assays or Cell Growth assays. MTT is converted to water-insoluble, dark blue MTT-formazan by mitochondrial dehydrogenases of living cells. The intensity of the color can then be measured colorimetrically at a wavelength of 570 nm.

Trans-Stilbene is used in transition metal-catalyzed asymmetric epoxidation and dihydroxylation. It is also useful in making synthetic estrogens.

GoldBio Tris has the highest purity available on the market. Short for Tris (hydroxymethyl) aminomethane (THAM), Tris is an organic compound often used in buffer solutions such as TAE or TBE for electrophoresis gels. Tris is highly soluble in water and is useful in the pH range 7.0-9.0 and is also used in the preparation of Laemmli buffer, one of the most common SDS-PAGE buffers. In addition, it can also be used for many custom running and loading buffers, most often with glycine and SDS.

Tris hydrochloride is a reagent that is used for the stabilization of buffer formulations and electrophoresis of biological molecules.

Tropine is a derivative of tropane, which contains a hydroxyl group. It a a building block for the synthesis of atropine, an anticholinergic drug.

Tyramine HCl is a monoamine derived from tyrosine. It is a catecholamine releasing agent that does not have the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier. It can be released as a false transmitter.

Uric acid is a xanthine oxidase product and the final result of the oxidation of purine catabolism in primates and humans.

XTT sodium salt is used in the XTT colormetric assay and assists in identifying metabolic activity within cells. In the XTT assay, the metabolic activity of cells reduces XTT sodium salt to an orange color formazan dye by dehydrogenase enzymes. Dye conversion will only occur in viable cells.

Xylenol Blue is a useful alternative to thymol blue developed in the 1920s. Xylenol Blue can be used at half the concentration that thymol blue requires. It is functional at the same two pH ranges, acidic (pH 1-3), which transitions from red to yellow, and basic (pH 8-10), which transitions from yellow to blue. Xylenol Blue may be substituted for any experiment that requires thymol blue.

Zymosan A is a polysaccharide with repeating glucose units conntected by β-1,3-glycosidic linkages. Zymosan is prepared from the cell wall of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and is often used to induce sterile inflammation, including proinflammatory cytokines, protein phosphorylation and inositol phosphate formation. Zymosan is insoluble in water, but may be suspended uniformly in saline solutions.

α-Cyclodextrin is a polysaccharide of six glucose units that are covalently attached end-to-end via α-1, 4 linkages. There are two other naturally occurring cyclodextrins, β- and Ɣ-, which contain seven and eight glucose units respectively. In water, these fibers take on a toroid or truncated cone configuration. In aqueous medium, the exterior surface of cyclodextrins is hydrophilic while the interior core is hydrophobic. This allows for the formation of guest-host relationships with small hydrophobic molecules.

α-Cyclodextrin is a natural, soluble dietary fiber. It has the unique ability among known fibers to bind nine times its weight in fat. This high ratio of binding makes α-Cyclodextrin practical as a weight loss supplement.

α-D-Fucose is a six-carbon deoxy monosaccharide. It is equivalent to 6-deoxy-D-galactose. D-fucose acts as a non-metabolizable analogue of L-arabinose and inhibits induction of the L-arabinose operon in some bacteria. Some resistant bacteria possess a mutant araC gene where D-fucose acts as a gratuitous inducer of the L-arabinose operon. D-fucose induces β-galactosidase to some extent in Lactobacillus plantarum.

α-D-fucose inhibits the eukaryotic enzyme Lysine-specific demethylase 1 (LSD1A), thereby causing gene repression. α-D-fucose is being explored in treatments for neurodegenerative diseases because of its effect on gene repression. Seen upregulated in many cancers, LSD1A overexpression pushes the cell cycle of otherwise non-transformed cells so α-D-fucose is being explored in cancers treatments as well.

α-D-Galactose 1-phosphate, dipotassium salt pentahydrate is a phosphorylated sugar produced from galactose by galactokinase. It is an intermediate found in the conversion pathway of glucose and galactose.