Significant Progress in Project Developed at ETU Laboratory

Important Step in Project Developed at ETÜ Laboratory The project titled "10x Concentrated Loading Buffer Used in Protein Loading in SDS-PAGE Studies," developed under the coordination of Erzurum Teknik Üniversitesi (ETÜ) Technology Transfer Office, has been approved by the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office and qualified to obtain patent protection. The invention titled "10x Concentrated Loading Buffer Used in Protein Loading in SDS-PAGE Studies," conducted under the direction of Associate Professor Ömer Faruk Karataş from the Faculty of Science at ETÜ and with Associate Professor Serkan Örtücü and Dr. Elanur Aydın Karataş serving as researchers, is being used as a buffer in protein loading operations in R&D studies carried out in many departments of the Faculty of Science, Agriculture, Veterinary Medicine, Medicine and Pharmacy, particularly in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, where Western Blot and SDS-PAGE studies are conducted. Drawing attention to the increasing environmental awareness and safety understanding, and noting that less toxic and non-flammable chemicals are beginning to be used in place of toxic chemicals that persist long in nature in molecular biology techniques, Associate Professor Ömer Faruk Karataş provided information about the developed project: "Current loading buffers are referred to as Laemmli loading buffers and are commercially sold at 2x, 4x, 5x and 6x concentrations. These loading buffers are mixed with samples at ratios of 1:1, 1:3, 1:4 and 1:5 respectively and are used primarily as density enhancers. If the expression of the analyzed protein is low or if the concentration of the protein sample used is low, the use of these buffer solutions reduces the success rate of the study being conducted. It is only possible to address the mentioned shortcomings by using a more concentrated loading buffer. Our developed 10x concentrated loading buffer, which is mixed at a 1:9 ratio with the protein sample, allows more sample to be loaded into each well. This situation provides more sample loading compared to the 2x, 4x, 5x and 6x loading buffers available on the market, providing benefits such as easy detection of proteins with low expression and successful examination of protein samples with low concentration," he said. Stating that the invention, named "ClearBand Laemmli Sample Buffer (10X)," was developed and patented together with ETÜ, Karataş said: "Furthermore, the aforementioned product constitutes one of the finest examples of University-Industry cooperation. An agreement has been reached with EcoTech Biotechnology for the sale and marketing of the product, and it is being exported to many countries including numerous universities in Turkey as well as the United States, United Kingdom, France, Australia, Germany, Belgium, Japan, China and South Korea."