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Updated: Sep 25, 2026

Reconstitution of a Kv Channel into Lipid Membranes for Structural and Functional Studies
Published on: July 13, 2013
Compatibility of detergents with the microbatch-under-oil crystallization method
Patrick J Loll1, Anna Tretiakova, Erik Soderblom
1Department of Biochemistry, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19102-1192, USA. pat.loll@drexel.edu
Abstract:
Detergents are required to solubilize integral membrane proteins and are common components of the solutions used to crystallize these molecules. It has been unclear whether these detergents are completely compatible with the oils used in the microbatch-under-oil crystallization technique, because they might conceivably be lost from solution by partitioning into the oil phase. The partitioning of the detergents n-octyl-beta-d-glucopyranoside and Fos-Choline-12 into two different oils used for microbatch crystallization experiments has been examined. It was found that vigorous mixing and prolonged incubation of the aqueous detergent solutions with the oils leads to small losses of detergent (approximately 5% of the total detergent mass); however, gentle mixing that is more typical of the mixing encountered in a crystallization experiments leads to negligible loss of detergent.
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