Revolutionising the Study of Protein Phosphorylation

Users of Bio-Rad™ mini-PROTEAN® tetra cell and Life Technologies™ XCell SureLock® mini-cell electrophoresis tanks, can now harness the power of Phos-tag™, with the latest additions to the Phos-tag SuperSep pre-cast acrylamide gel range from Alpha Laboratories.

The new gels, designed for compatibility with these specific commonly used tanks, offer a fast and simple way to separate phosphorylated and non-phosphorylated proteins by SDS-PAGE, by reducing the migration speed of phosphorylated proteins.

Phos-tag is a functional molecule that binds phosphorylated ions under physiological conditions (pH 5-8). Affinity for the phosphate dianion, PO42- is greater than other ions, making Phos-tag binding selective for phosphate groups. This allows Phos-tag to replace conventional radioisotopes and enzyme immunoassay in traditional detection protocols.

Phosphate affinity SDS-PAGE was pioneered by the Department of Functional Molecular Science at Hiroshima University with Kinoshita et al, reporting a technique to separate large phosphoproteins in Nature Protocols 2009. Research labs worldwide have been harnessing the power of Phos-tag to investigate phosphorylation events that influence cellular processes in animal, plant, bacterial and fungal samples.

Today, researchers like Caspari and Hilditch , are using combined IEF and phosphate affinity SDS PAGE to uncover cell signalling mysteries such as the distinct Cdc2 pools regulating cell cycle progression and DNA Damage response in fission yeast.