I am working with carrageenan gel for infusing in microchip. I am using 1% carrageenan gel for infusing. In my technique I need to perfuse water parallelly by carrageenan gel throughout the other channel. when the gel come contact with the water (room temperature water) it started dissolving. To check this I took small amount of carrageenan in eppendrof and put water in it and it dissolve gradually. Does any one can give me some suggestion how to avoid dissolving carrageenan gel in water?
Hi Fahima,
Gel formation of carrageenan (Car) depends largely on three parameters which are: type of carrageenan (fixed in your study I guess), pH and the presence of specific ions. If you keep pH between 5 and 9 you should be fine. I think the reason for dissolution lies in the fact that Car needs specific ions to remain in the gel state and in your application it looks like you are leaching out those ions. Once these ions have been leached out, Car dissolves. So, my advice if possible in your application, is to infuse with a solution of KCl or NACl, to make sure you replenish the ions that may have leached out. Salt concentrations you may have to experiment a bit with, perhaps try 1, 10 and 100 millimolar KCl and see which one works best.
The article below shows some experimental results on gel-state in relation to specific cations:
Article Physico-chemical properties of carrageenan gels in presence ...
Kind regards, Leo
Leo Vleugels Thank you very much for your suggestion. I am now preparing the protocol with KCl. I hope your suggestion will help to solve my problem.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Gels