Unique Mobility Instrument

Wyatt Technology Corporation announced the launch of its Möbiuζ™ mobility instrument. The instrument incorporates several patent-pending innovations to realise fast and reliable measurements of macromolecular electrophoretic mobilities. Besides being capable of swiftly measuring mobilities of large particles such as liposomes and VLPs, Wyatt Technology’s Möbiuζ™ is the only laser-based instrument that achieves reproducible measurements of traditionally very challenging protein samples including antibody formulations, bovine serum albumin and lysozyme. It is designed specifically to address the unique measurement of protein mobilities rather than a remake of a device designed to measure particulates.

As well as being a non-invasive method, laser light scattering is prized for its ability to carry out physical, first-principle measurements of macromolecules’ electrophoretic mobilities. However, when it comes to proteins, satisfactory results have been difficult to come by due to their small sizes (<5 nm) and their more conspicuous Brownian motions. Lengthier measurements are therefore necessary to average out the mobility-masking diffusion and reveal the macromolecular electrophoresis. In the process, these fragile molecules are subjected to electrical currents and often irreversibly damaged and degraded, rendering the results unreliable. As the solution ionicity increases, the situation deteriorates because even more current is required to drive measurable electrophoresis. Existing products on the market notoriously ‘cook’ their protein samples and
struggle to measure any macromolecule smaller than 5 nm at a reasonable concentration.

The key to the successful measurement of proteins’ mobilities lies in a much shortened measurement time and the availability of sufficient data to average away molecular diffusion. Wyatt Technology’s Möbiuζ™ achieves these goals through massive parallelism of detection and extends the measurable molecular size range below 2nm. A reduced measurement time (<60 seconds in most cases) contributes to excellent preservation of precious and fragile protein samples.