Pressure BioSciences Inc. débuted a pair of sample preparation kits for its pressure cycling device to extract proteins from worms.
The Easton, Mass.-based lab equipment maker said its ProteoSolve-CE NATIVE and ProteoSolve-CE STRINGENT kits allow researchers to extract proteins from the Caenorhabditis elegans nematode.
According to the company, study of C. elegans is widespread and was a part of the research that led to Nobel Prizes in 2002, 2006 and 2008. But the worm’s tough outer coat makes it difficult to break apart in order to study its genes and proteins.
Pressure BioSciences founder, president and CEO Richard Schumacher told MassDevice earlier this week that his firm’s device uses very high-pressure cycles to break down samples for mass spectrometry.
“We turn pressure on and off. Everything in nature has its own pressure profile. Sometimes a substance at 10,000 psi might be affected significantly, where something else might take 50,000 psi or 30,000 psi,” Schumacher told us. “Everything changes under pressure and once you figure it out you harness the ability of this pressure to accentuate and accelerate what you’re trying to do on the lab bench.”
PBI vice president Nate Lawrence added that the kits can also be used to study other nematode species, citing the estimated $1 billion in annual crop damage caused by plant parasitic nematodes, according to a press release.