I was reading the protocol to isolate the stress granules which is a very tedious procedure and required a certain set of reagents to be very specific. I don't understand that why Heparin is used in the lysis buffer?
Heparin is able to bind a number of proteins, enzymes, and polycationic organic compounds. The binding is either ionically or more specific protein-ligand or enzyme-inhibitor/enzyme-activator interactions.
It is used as competitor and non-specific RNase inhibitor to protect the RNA from degradation. The downside of using heparin is that it interacts and inhibits many RNA binding proteins, for example it inhibits reverse transcriptase so it is not suitable for reverse transcription and to remove it from your sample you have precipitate RNA using Lithium chloride method.
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