Tris Buffer System for THAM Application

Tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane, English name Tromethamine or Trometamol, abbreviated as THAM, THAM, it is a very widely used organic reagent, can be used to make medicine, organic synthesis, biological buffer, etc. Among them, in biochemical experiments, many protein and nucleic acid-related experiments require THAM as a biological buffer.

THAM can be produced by the high-pressure reaction of methanol and dichloromethane or nitromethane under a catalyst, and then the conversion of nitrogen and hydrogen. THAM is very soluble in water and is alkaline in nature. As a buffer, it usually needs to be used with acid. For example, THAM-HCl buffer is more commonly used. In addition, there are many other buffer systems.

THAM+HCl or THAM hydrochloride: pH=7.5～8.5, commonly used pH values ​​in biochemical experiments are 6.8, 7.4, 8.0, 8.8. THAM is widely used in the preparation of buffers in biochemistry and molecular biology experiments, and even has a tendency to exceed phosphate (NaH2PO4, Na2HPO4) buffers.

Tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane THAM

THAM-HCl buffer

THAM-phosphate buffer: pH=5.0～9.0, phosphoric acid has secondary dissociation, and the buffering pH range is very wide.

TE buffer, THAM+EDTA, can be used for DNA stabilization and storage, inactivated virus preservation solution

TAE: THAM+EDTA+acetic acid

TBE: THAM+EDTA+boric acid

Can be used as electrophoresis buffer, agarose gel electrophoresis, polyacrylamide electrophoresis

Electrophoresis solution. Long-term electrophoresis during electrophoresis will make the positive electrode become acidic and the negative electrode alkaline. The buffer system should have a strong buffering capacity to keep the pH of the solution at both ends basically stable.

Because Tris alkali is relatively strong, this buffer system can be used to prepare buffers with a wide range of pH values ​​ranging from acidic to alkaline; it has little interference with biochemical processes and does not interfere with calcium, magnesium ions and Heavy metal ions are precipitated.

It should be noted that the pH value of the THAM buffer is greatly affected by the concentration of the solution. The buffer solution is diluted ten times, and the pH value changes more than 0.1, and it is easy to absorb CO2, so it needs to be sealed. The THAM produced by Desheng is mainly used as a biological buffer, and it is different from the tromethamine used in drugs, and needs to be distinguished.