Glycogen (5 mg/ml)

Glycogen is a branched chain carbohydrate and is useful as a nucleic acid coprecipitant. It is provided in five tubes of 1 mL each at a concentration of 5 mg/mL. Features of this glycogen product:

• Ideal for RT-PCR
• Increases pellet mass
• Quantitative recovery of low concentrations (ng/mL) of nucleic acid
• Prevents pellet loss in nuclease protection assays

What is a coprecipitant?
Coprecipitants are inert substances used to aid recovery of nucleic acids during alcohol precipitations. While they can be used for precipitating large amounts of nucleic acids, they are essential for quantitative recovery of small amounts of nucleic acids in dilute solutions. Often, the use of such molecules is desirable for no other reason but visualization of the pelleted precipitate after centrifugation. When used at a final concentration of 50–150 μg/mL, glycogen will coprecipitate with nucleic acids in the presence of 0.5 M ammonium acetate and isopropanol or ethanol. It is supplied at a concentration of 5 mg/mL in diethyl pyrocarbonate-treated distilled water. Glycogen will not interfere with _260/280 readings. This glycogen product is isolated from mussel, a biological source, as are most other preparations of this coprecipitant. Glycogen is treated with Proteinase K and SDS to remove any contaminating nucleases, and then phenol/chloroform extracted, ethanol precipitated, and resuspended in nuclease-free water. The glycogen is guaranteed RNase- and DNase-free.