Description
Biotin is a small biomolecule important for many cellular processes. Most importantly for biotechnology applications, biotin is ammenable to conjugation to proteins for use in biochemical assays. Biotin has a very strong affinity for avidin and streptavidin; an attraction that is the strongest and most stable non-covalent interaction known. B-galactosidase (b-gal; b-gal) is an enzyme that hydrolyzes b-galactosides (such as lactose and various glycoproteins) into simple sugars. B-galactosidase is routinely used as a reporter in biochemical experiments as well as a marker for gene expression experiments in E. coli. B-galactosidase can be used to cleave the chemical X-gal that forms an intense blue product that can easily be quantified