Sample Preparation

THE SAMPLE PREPARATION DILEMA

Biological samples often contain different types of impurities or components which have to be removed in order to do further analysis.

• Salts                               
• Buffers
• Detergents
• Polyacrylamide
• Excess Dyes
• Radiolabel
• Small molecules such as, primers, peptides, inhibitors and drugs.

Some biological materials must be purified and/or enriched from the surrounding matrix before they can be quantified or characterised.  

Without sample preparation, detection methods such as mass spectroscopy and chemical assays will have trouble accurately identifying the molecules of interest because of the interfering background of the other molecules in the sample.

There is currently no single solution for the purification of samples so a variety of techniques are used based on sample characteristics and the nature of which needs to bo removed.