Hi,
Our lab is purifying a number of proteins for N-terminal sequencing and
other applications. We usually silver-stain our gels to make sure there
are no contaminating proteins which could interfere with our sequencing.
The problem is that our MW standards (from Sigma) are designed for
Coomassie Blue staining, and give many strong "mystery bands" when we
silver stain them. I assume this is because the proteins used to make the
standards aren't too pure to begin with. We've tried diluting the
standards more to make the mystery bands fainter, but some of these bands
are nearly as strong as the expected bands.
Does anyone know of a cleaner set of MW standards that are commercially
available and give (reasonably) clean bands on a silver stained gel (i.e.
good enough to send to a reviewer without having to say, "okay, ignore
these twelve bands; that's BSA, that's lysozyme...or is it THAT band...")
Thanks fer yer help.
Ed Beaty
edbeaty at uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
