Requirement for cysteine in the color silver staining of proteins in polyacrylamide gels

To determine whether cysteine residues have a contribution to the mechanism of color silver staining, we silver stained sodium dodecylsulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis separations of proteins which have few or no cysteines. Proteins without cysteine stained negatively (yellow against a yellow background) with silver. Proteins with one or more cysteines stained orange, red, brown, or green/gray depending on the mole percentage of cysteine and whether they contained covalently attached lipids. The colors could not be correlated with the mole percentages of cysteine of these proteins indicating that some components other than cysteine affect the staining color of cysteine-containing proteins. Silver staining of amino acids, sugars, nucleotide bases, or lipopolysaccharide dot-blotted onto nitrocellulose paper implicated adenine, lipids, the basic amino acids, and glutamine, but not sugars or other amino acids in silver/protein complexes.