Carrier Ampholytes in Capillary Isoelectric Focusing, Which One Do You Use? (WCBP 2012)

Carrier ampholytes are the single most important component of a capillary IEF separation. Unfortunately, all carrier ampholytes are not created equal.

While carrier ampholytes are available from a number of manufacturers, they have significant differences. Understanding those differences accelerates method development.

Today, three brands of carrier ampholytes are commercially available: Pharmalyte by GE, Servalyt by Serva and Biolyte by Bio-Rad. While pH gradients from all three are quite linear, they do differ in baseline noise and peak resolution for some proteins. For example, Servalyts have higher resolutions for fusion proteins and proteins with heavy sialyation.

In this poster, we will discuss the effects of the carrier ampholytes on peak pattern, baseline noise and resolution.