Keratins are one of the major interferents encountered in preteomic analysis and can hide the proteins of interest of your sample. Keratins come from the skin, the hairs or the nails. It is thus essantial to take all possible precautions to avoid this contamination which is detrimental to the qiuality of your results.
Consult our « Sample preparation guide »
Polymers (polyethylene glycol (PEG), polypropylene glycol (PPG), polysiloxanes, etc.) and additives (phtalates, etc.) are present in plastics commonly used in laboraties (flask, vials, pipette tips, tubes, etc.) and can contaminate your samples. Depending on the type of platics used and on the sample composition (concentration of some solvants, concentration of acids, etc.) this contamination can be very important and totally hide the signal of interest during mass spectrometry analysis.
We recommend to use tubes in Teflon or polypropylene.
Detergents (Tween, Triton, SDS, CHAPS etc.), salts and non-volatile buffers (Tris, NaCl, etc.) are often added to biological samples. Depending on their concentration, detergents can strongly alter the signal of interest during mass spectrometry analysis.
It is thus very important to give us information on the possible concentrations of detergents in your samples to adapt our analysis protocols.
