Should I add protease inhibitors to the homogenization buffer for protein extraction applications?
It depends on your downstream application, but protease inhibitors are often recommended to prevent protease-mediated protein degradation. Bertin’s Life Sciences team has also developed the Protein safe kits, a state-of-the-art lysing kit containing a proprietary mix of protease inhibitors. Please find more information and tips on our Protein Extraction page.
How should I choose the volume of my homogenization tube?
We recommend choosing the volume of your homogenization tube based on your sample size. For samples between 20mg and 200mg, the 2mL tube is the recommended size. For samples between 200mg and 2g, the 7mL tube is recommended.
However, in some cases, when working with hard and elastic samples such as skin samples, it can be good to use a larger tube than the one normally recommended. Indeed beads will gain more energy in larger tubes which will lead to a more efficient homogenization.
What is the minimum volume of liquid that you can add to the lysing kit tubes of 7 mL?
In order to obtain the maximum efficiency, we recommend to use the 7 mL tubes when the volume of your samples is higher than 1.5 mL.
How many 50 mL tubes can I homogenize simultaneously?
The new 50 mL tube holder can fit up to 3 tubes of 50 mL.