I read an article where they said, they used 20-25 OD A254 sample for a ribosome separation on sucrose gradient. I know this is an important parameter but I am not getting it how much does that mean? Can anyone explain it please?
Thanks
The OD unit is a typical measurement of DNA or RNA, with 1 OD260 unit equal to 40 ng/µI of RNA, for example. What is missing from this definition is the pathlength through the sample. It refers to a 1-cm pathlength, the usual pathlength of a quartz spectrophotometer cuvette:
http://ask.trilinkbiotech.com/q-what-are-od260-units/
I think the authors meant that they used a quantity of ribosomes that would have had an absorbance of 20-25 if measured in a 1-cm pathlength cuvette at 254 nm in a 1 ml volume.
Of course, it is not possible to measure such a high absorbance. A small portion of the sample would have been diluted for the absorbance measurement.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Microbiology
- Virology
- Virus