zymolyase

[Michael Lichten]

Jens Alfken asks about zymolyase and the "yeast lytic enzyme" sold by ICN.  

The first thing to get is the ICN 1992-1993 catalog.  In it you will find a 
more complete listing.  ICN will be happy to sell you Zymolyase (either 20T 
or 100T) which is repackaged from the original supplier.  They also sell a 
variety that they just call yeast lytic enzyme.  All are prepared from 
Arthrobacter luteus and all are (presumably) the same enzyme, just with 
different levels of activity and different levels of contaminating 
activities (i.e. proteases, DNases, RNases, etc.).

We find that, for routine DNA preparations, the yeast lytic enzyme (cat 
#152270) is quite satisfactory and is by far the cheapest ($0.3 per 1K 
units).  We use it routinely.  For more demanding purposes, such as 
chromatin preparation, we still use zymolyase 100T (cat #32-093-1) which is 
much more expensive ($12 per 1K units), and there are those in the 
chromatin business who claim that you really should purify your own 
lyticase to get rid of all the proteases.  We have no experience with 
spheroplast transformation, so I can offer you no help on that account.

You can see, however, that it's well worth your while to try both options.  
If the cheaper enzyme will do, why not use it?  

Good luck,

Michael Lichten, lichten at helix.nih.gov

Who started the business of these silly quotes at the end of a message?