Tris is known in Chinese as trimethylol aminomethane, aminobutanol, bradykinine, 2-amino-2 - (hydroxymethyl) - 1,3-propanediol. It is a white crystal or powder. It is soluble in ethanol and water, slightly soluble in ethyl acetate and benzene, insoluble in ether and carbon tetrachloride, corrosive to copper and aluminum, and irritating chemicals.
Tris has high buffer capacity, high solubility in water and is inert to many enzyme reactions, which makes Tris a very satisfactory buffer for many biochemical purposes. Generally used to stabilize the reaction system, pH has a strong buffer capacity between 7.5-9.0.
Advantages of Tris buffer:
1. Because Tris base is more basic, we can only use this kind of buffer system to prepare the buffer with a wide range of pH from acidic to alkaline;
2. It has little interference to biochemical process and does not precipitate with calcium, magnesium and heavy metal ions.
Disadvantages of Tris buffer:
1. The pH value of the buffer is greatly affected by the concentration of the solution. When the buffer is diluted ten times, the pH value changes more than 0.1;
2. The temperature effect is large, and the temperature change has a great influence on the pH value of the buffer. The pH value of the buffer at 4 ℃ is 8.4, and the pH value at 37 ℃ is 7.4. The tris HCl buffer prepared at room temperature can not be used for 0-4;
3. It is easy to absorb CO2 in the air, so the prepared buffer should be tightly sealed;
4. This buffer has a certain interference effect on some pH electrodes, so the electrode compatible with tris solution should be used.
Application of Tris buffer:
In the electrophoretic buffer, glycine buffer system is used to stabilize pH value; Tris-HCL buffer system is used to stabilize pH value in gel; it is widely used as solvent for nucleic acid and protein; the low ionic strength characteristic of Tris buffer can also be applied to the formation of intermediate fiber of nematode; EDTA buffer is added into Tris hydrochloric acid buffer to form "TE buffer", which can be used for stabilization and storage of DNA. The "Tae buffer" can be obtained by changing the acid solution of pH value into acetic acid, and the "tbe buffer" can be obtained by changing it into boric acid. These two solutions were used for electrophoresis.
