Rifampicin is a broad-spectrum antibiotic known for its efficacy against tuberculosis and other infections caused by Mycobacterium species. This semisynthetic antibiotic has also been shown to work against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), to activate nuclear pregnane x receptor (PXR), and to promote CYP2C-mediated metabolism.

Rifampicin functions by binding the β-subunit of RNA polymerase, inhibiting RNA synthesis. Resistance to this antibiotic develops from mutations on the binding site on RNA polymerase leading to a lower affinity for rifampicin.

Spectinomycin is an aminocyclitol antibiotic isolated from Streptomyces spectabilis. It is effective against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, but most commonly used against Gonococcus species. It has also been used to monitor cell fate during leaf development and as a selection marker in plants to display successful transformation of the Spcr gene.

Spectinomycin functions by binding the 30s ribosomal subunit, inhibiting tRNA translation and protein synthesis. Resistance to this antibiotic is conferred through the aadA gene and mutated rpsE gene.

TCEP-HCl is an odorless reducing agent suitable for protein applications and in the preparation for electrophoresis. TCEP is water soluble, is stable in a variety of solutions and is particularly useful in the labeling of cysteine residues with maleimides, preventing the cysteines from forming disulfide bonds. As a reducing agent, TCEP has many other desirable features.

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.

5-Bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl β-D-galactopyranoside is most commonly known as X-Gal. X-gal is a histochemical substrate for β-galactosidase which cleaves X-Gal to yield an insoluble blue precipitate.

X-Gal is a mainstay in molecular biology cloning applications in which it is used to detect the activity of β-galactosidase. X-Gal is used to detect the insertion of foreign DNA into the lacZ region of a plasmid DNA. Insertion of DNA into the lacZ region results in the loss of β-galactosidase activity. Bacteria cells that retain active β-galactosidase will result in characteristic blue colonies. Successful disruption of the lacZα gene disrupts the α-complementation of the β-galactosidase gene and the precipitate does not form, resulting in white colonies.

Many other applications also use X-Gal as a substrate to detect β-galactosidase activity. These include β-galactosidase -antibody linked immunoassays and immunohistochemistry, coliphage detection based on β-galactosidase induction and the detection of micrometastasis formation during tumor progession.