The Chinese name of Tris is tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane, tromethamine, tromethamine, 2-amino-2-(hydroxymethyl)-1,3-propanediol. It is a white crystal or powder. Soluble in ethanol and water, slightly soluble in ethyl acetate and benzene, insoluble in ether and carbon tetrachloride, corrosive to copper and aluminum, and irritating chemicals.
Tris has a high buffer capacity, high solubility in water, and is inert to many enzymatic reactions, making Tris a very satisfactory buffer for many biochemical purposes. It is generally used to stabilize the pH of the reaction system, and has a strong buffering capacity between pH 7.5-9.0.
Advantages of Tris buffer:
- Because Tris base is more alkaline, you can only use this buffer system to configure a buffer with a wide range of pH ranging from acidic to alkaline;
- It has little interference to biochemical processes, and does not precipitate with calcium, magnesium ions and heavy metal ions.
Disadvantages of Tris buffer: - The pH of the buffer is greatly affected by the concentration of the solution, the buffer is diluted ten times, and the pH change is greater than 0.1;
- The temperature effect is large, and the temperature change has a great influence on the pH of the buffer. The pH of the buffer at 4°C is 8.4, and the pH at 37°C is 7.4. It must be prepared at the temperature of use, and prepared at room temperature Tris-HCL buffer cannot be used for 0-4;
- It is easy to absorb CO2 in the air, so the prepared buffer should be tightly sealed;
- This buffer has a certain interference effect on some PH electrodes, so use electrodes that are compatible with Tris solution.
Application of Tris buffer:
It forms a buffer system with glycine in the electrophoresis buffer to stabilize the pH; uses the Tris-HCL buffer system in the gel to stabilize the pH; it is widely used as a solvent for nucleic acids and proteins; the low ionic strength of the Tris buffer can also be used The formation of intermediate fibers of nematodes; add EDTA to Tris hydrochloric acid buffer to make "TE buffer", which can be used for DNA stabilization and storage; change the pH-adjusting acid solution to acetic acid to obtain "TAE buffer", change "TBE buffer" can be obtained as boric acid. These two solutions are used in nucleic acid electrophoresis experiments.
