Pressure Biosciences (PBI) has announced the commercial release of Proteosolve-CE Native and Proteosolve-CE Stringent pressure cycling technology (PCT)-dependent kits.
The two kits contain reagents, consumable processing containers (Pulse Tubes), and instructions for use, and are intended to be used with the company's PCT Sample Preparation System.
Together, these kits offer the researcher the ability to extract an abundance of either native or denatured proteins from nearly all parts of the C elegans organism.
Both kits were developed in conjunction with Dr John Collins, associate professor of Biochemistry at the University of New Hampshire (UNH), and an expert in the study of C elegans.
Dr Collins said: 'The tough outer coat (cuticle) of C elegans makes it extremely resilient to lysis.
'This causes great difficulty to researchers who need to study its genes and proteins.
'The kits from PBI improve the ability to break apart this very important model organism, which in turn enables the researcher to more easily extract important biomolecules for scientific studies,' he added.
In addition to working with UNH, PBI also engaged the capabilities and resources of the Laboratory for Innovative Translational Technologies (HC-LITT) of Harvard Catalyst, The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center to help in the development of these new products.
Dr Nate Lawrence, vice-president of Pressure Biosciences, said: 'Although developed specifically for C elegans, we believe these new kits can also play a key role in studies of other nematodes.
'This is important, since human, animal and plant parasitic nematodes currently cause significant public health and agriculture issues.
'Since a thorough understanding of nematode DNA, RNA and proteins is crucial to achieve better control of nematode related diseases, improved methods for the extraction of nucleic acids and proteins from nematodes is imperative.
'To that end, we believe these new kits offer a safer, faster and more accurate way to extract nematode biomolecules than current methods,' he added.
