I have about 500 uL of freeze-dried whole blood, wanted to reconstitute the samples in ultra-pure water for biochemical analyses and metal determinations, but the samples simply do not dissolve! I've tried ultrasonication, centrifugation and inverting the eppendorfs. What else can UI try? Heating but up to only about 25 degrees celsius, to not denature proteins and enzymes? What else? (It's shark blood).
No, just freeze-dried after removal from the sharks, nothing added.
Whole blood is VERY difficult to freeze dry ... militaries and the Red Cross / Crescent have been trying to do this for many years ... I think they now do plasma only, even that is a complex mixture of proteins, lipids, sugars, salts and other chemicals ... I suspect that the the blood did not freeze dry well and that some proteins aggregated or dried to a film, hence the challenge of resuspension.
We use 100 mM NaOH for dissolving dry pellets of TCA-precipitated proteins. Not sure it will work with your samples or have negative effects in your downstream assays.
If no cryoprotectant was used, it is impossible to redissolve the material, the hydrophobic effect kicked in.
Guys, I was wrong, it's not whole blood, it's serum!!! Weirder...
Blood, serum, a protein solution, it all depends on the cryoprotectant
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