Anatrace Lipids

Fos-Choline® detergents

anatrace Lipids are commonly used by researchers to stabilize membrane proteins. However, the common challenge with working with lipids is their high cost and lack of solubility in water.

Anatrace® scientists answered the challenge and developed innovative Anatrace Fos-Choline® detergents, with the stabilizing properties of lipids, combined with the characteristics of a water-soluble molecule. Fos-Cholines employ charged amine and phosphate groups in combination with an alkyl chain to produce a zwitterionic surfactant. This unique architecture is water-soluble and capable of both stabilizing and keeping membrane proteins soluble in aqueous solutions.

The Fos-Choline detergents have been successfully used in membrane protein studies by NMR (Evanics et al., Hwang et al., Oxenoid et al.). Short chain phospholipids such as dihexanoylphosphatidylcholine (DHPC), have been used to solubilize and reconstitute integral membrane proteins. These compounds form water-soluble micelles in solution and have been shown to maintain native protein structure and function when used in membrane protein purification protocols (Hauser, Fernández et al., Mandal et al.).