Good MW Markers for Silver Staining

[Ekramoddoullah, Abul Kalam M.]

In article <edbeaty-240794192301 at koniskyj3.life.uiuc.edu>, edbeaty at uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (ed beaty) writes:
>Hi,
>
>Our lab is purifying a number of proteins for N-terminal sequencing and
>other applications.  We usually silver-stain our gels to make sure there
>are no contaminating proteins which could interfere with our sequencing. 
>The problem is that our MW standards (from Sigma) are designed for
>Coomassie Blue staining, and give many strong "mystery bands" when we
>silver stain them.  I assume this is because the proteins used to make the
>standards aren't too pure to begin with.  We've tried diluting the
>standards more to make the mystery bands fainter, but some of these bands
>are nearly as strong as the expected bands.  
>
>
>Does anyone know of a cleaner set of MW standards that are commercially
>available and give (reasonably) clean bands on a silver stained gel (i.e.
>good enough to send to a reviewer without having to say, "okay, ignore
>these twelve bands; that's BSA, that's lysozyme...or is it THAT band...")
>
>Thanks fer yer help.
>
>Ed Beaty

Try BioRad's low mol standard at 1:100 dilution and use fresh sample buffer. I
hope that helps.

Abul
>edbeaty at uxa.cso.uiuc.edu

  EKRAMODDOULLAH, ABUL KALAM M.     Title: Research Scientist
  Forestry Canada                   Phone: (604) 363-0600
  Victoria, B.C.                    Internet: AEKRAMODDOUL at A1.PFC.Forestry.CA