I am trying to perform isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) for quantifying DNA and liposome binding thermodynamics, but the samples are in low volume and very low concentration (~40 nM). Do you think a Nano ITC instrument (compared to a regular VP-ITC) would be able to be used for this low-concentration system?
Farzin Mashali - 40 nM sample concentration in the ITC cell is likely too low , of a concentration to use for ITC, regardless of the volume of the ITC cell. I typically recommend a minimum of 5 uM sample concentration in the ITC cell. Some samples can get decent data if the concentration is about 1 uM. You may be able to use a lower concentration if your binding is very exothermic (or endothermic), and the binding is very tight. The larger cell volume ITCs are considered more sensitive, because the observed signal/noise ratio of the raw ITC titration data is typically greater compared to the smaller cell volumes. You also need to consider the C value, the binding affinity, and the heat change of binding.
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