Is there a cheaper alternative to IPTG?

[Song Tan]

In article <altman-0912942311290001 at b219-mac2.stanford.edu>,
altman at cmgm.stanford.edu (John Altman) wrote:
> In article <tan-0812941554100001 at smac.ethz.ch>, tan at mol.biol.ethz.ch (Song
> Tan) wrote:

> > Someone in our lab tried unsuccessfully to use lactose instead of IPTG for
> > induction a while ago and decided the problem was pH changes as the
> > lactose was hydrolyzed by the cells.  IPTG doesn't suffer from this
> > problem because it is nonhydrolyzable, of course.  
> 
> What sort of media did he use?  Would media with a high buffer 
> strength (e.g. TB instead of LB) help?
> 

Sorry, but I don't know what media was used for the experiment I mentioned
above.  LB or 2xTY would be my guess.  

Zophonias Jonsson discusses the same idea of buffering the media in a
separate followup posting.

-- 
Song Tan
Institute for Molecular Biology and Biophysics
ETH-Honggerberg (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)
8093 Zurich, Switzerland
email:  tan at mol.biol.ethz.ch