An Inexpensive High-Throughput NMR Tube Cleaning Apparatus

Authors

Bo Zhang, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
James Hodgson, Kansas State University, Manhattan
Walter Hancock, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Robert Powers, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2011

Citation

Anal Biochem. 2011 September 15; 416(2): 234–236. doi:10.1016/j.ab.2011.05.012.

Comments

© 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Abstract

Large scale Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) tube cleaning is currently a bottleneck in high throughput NMR ligand affinity screens. Expensive alternatives include discarding the NMR tubes after a single use (~$2 to $8/tube), using commercial NMR tube cleaners (~$15K) or abandoning NMR tubes for flow probe technology (~$75K). Instead, we describe a relatively inexpensive (~ $400) and easily constructed apparatus that can clean 180 NMR tubes an hour while using a modest amount of solvent. The application of this apparatus significantly shortens the time to recycle NMR tubes while avoiding cross contaminations and tube damage.