3 Factors To Prevent Protein Aggregation For Your Protein Purification Buffer

Before you purify your first batch of a new protein it is important to know what buffer you might want to use to keep precipitation of proteins to a minimum. Many cellular proteins are in a physiologic environment with neutral pH and relatively low salt concentrations, but very high concentration of other proteins. So you might think that a good place to start would be a physiologic buffer at pH 7.4 and 150 mM NaCl.- this is close to what some biochemists may call 'physiologic conditions'. Turns out though, that every protein is different. A protein solubility screen is therefore helpful in determining the best buffer conditions to prevent protein aggregation. However, there are three crucial factors that you should think about when choosing a purification buffer.