IAA (Iodoacetic Acid) is used for irreversible alkylation of cysteine thiol groups prior to protein digestion. By stabilizing the reduced state and preventing disulfide bond reformation, it improves digestion consistency and reproducibility, and is widely applied in proteomics sample preparation and LC-MS/MS analysis.
Product Overview
The reduction and alkylation steps before digestion are the foundation of proteomics quality control. If these steps are not properly executed, they will lead to subsequent experimental challenges:
1. Inefficient Digestion
If disulfide bonds are not fully reduced, the protein may refold and block cleavage sites, resulting in a significant reduction in protein identification depth and coverage.
2. Data Matching Distortion
If free thiol groups are not completely blocked, disulfide bond scrambling may occur, producing a large number of unidentified incorrect peptides, interfering with database searching.
3. Quantitative Accuracy Compromised
Inconsistent alkylation reactions may lead to multiple modified forms of the same peptide, dispersing the mass spectrometry signal intensity and severely disrupting the parallelism of quantification.
4. Background Noise Interference
Chemical impurities introduced by reagent impurities can significantly suppress ionization efficiency, leading to the loss of signals for low-abundance key biomarkers.
Advantages
✅ Efficient
Rapid and irreversible blocking of cysteine thiols stabilizes the reduced state and prevents disulfide bond reformation.
✅ Improved
Helps maintain proteins in an unfolded state, enhancing the efficiency of proteases such as trypsin.
✅ Enhanced
Reduces structure-related technical variability and improves the reproducibility of protein identification and quantification.
✅ Compatible
Easily integrated into routine pre-digestion procedures and suitable for a wide range of proteomics research applications.
Technical Support
1. Protocol Downloads
MtoZ Biolabs provides comprehensive experimental protocols and product manuals to help ensure smooth and reproducible workflows. For access to specific documents or detailed instructions, please contact our support team.
2. Customized Service Support
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3. FAQ and Expert Assistance
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