Hi, I am going to freeze dry samples prior to protein extraction for transport to some other destination. As seeds contain so much oil these are treated to defat them before protein extraction.I am going to treat seed samples with hexane in 1:3 and then drying overnight under fume hood. I have some fresh parts of plants as well. Do I need to treat them the same way or not as they contain a lot of liquid inside. Thanks. I am using aloe vera as well and its totally liquid.
Do I need to let it dry under fume hood overnight when I am going to freeze dry it after hexane treatment
Here is what you ca do. You can put acetone on -20 C. When acetone is cooled add it to homogenized seeds (for example add 1 L of cold acetone to 0.5 kg of seeds powder). Mix it for 20 minutes in ice-salt bath. Then remove some acetone by decanting and filtrate remaining powder using Büchner funnel. What you get is acetone powder that you can keep at -20 C. Also you can repeat the hole process after filtration on Büchner funnel.
Check this informative link on isolation of plant constituents:
http://www.slideshare.net/rahulbs89/extraction-of-plant-contituents
For complete de-fatting of the seed samples, dried seeds are advisable. Therefore, dried seed cake (powder) should be treated with n-hexane twice or thrice with fresh hexane with vigorous stirring complete extraction and allowed to settle. Each hexane soluble should be removed by decanting to obtain complete oil-free seed powder to use for protein extraction. Please note that n- hexane is a standard solvent for complete extraction of oil.
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