Amberlite XAD-1180 is a polymeric adsorbent resin that is used primarily in the purification and preparation of hydrophobic compounds. It has been used in the literature to prepare and examine a wide range of compounds including antibiotics and other drugs, vitamins, amino acids, detergents, enzymes, steroids and many other diverse molecules. It can also be used for the removal of detergents from solution, immobilization of enzymes, separation of polar and non-polar solvents and so on. Our laboratory used the resin for the removal of Triton X-114 detergent from bacterial protein extractions.
The product is supplied as 20- to 60-mesh beads of styrene/divinylbenzene polyaromatic polymer and it is available in 100g, 500g or 1kg batches. We have found that, in comparison to similar products offered by competitors such as Bio-Rad (they offer ‘Biobeads’ composed of a similar material, aimed at detergent removal from biological samples), Amberlite resin is significantly more cost-effective. Often, it is priced at approximately 10% of the price of similar products from other companies.
Working with this material is simple because it is supplied as a pre-wet mix. However, it contains sodium chloride and sodium carbonate as preservatives and these salts must be removed before use. Traces of unpolymerised material may also remain in the matrix, and although they can be removed by further extensive washing, we have not found them to cause problems when used in simple detergent removal applications.
The matrix material is extremely robust – it can withstand strong acids and bases (working range of pH 1-14), solvents, high temperatures (up to 150ºC) temperatures and high pressures (up to 1200psi). Thus, the material can be used in a wide range of applications and can be sterilized by chemical means or by autoclave.
The documentation provided with the product is brief but sufficient. Because this material has such a wide range of applications, a booklet of application notes are provided with the product that we have found useful as a starting point for protocol development.
For detergent removal of volumes up to 500 mL, we have found that the resin works well either in flow-through column format, or batch format. Because the resin is physically very hard and has a large particle size, it is sometimes difficult to recover all of the resin from batch procedures. To remove Triton X-114 from our protein extracts, we simply mix the required quantity of resin with our detergent-containing samples and mix for several hours. The resin can be removed by filtering or sedimentation. Some very brief application notes are provided with the resin, along with references to publications that utilize the product for various clean-up and purification strategies.
After use, the resin may be regenerated by washing with large volumes of water-miscible solvent (typically ethanol, methanol, acetone or similar). We have found that the material is significantly less effective when regenerated using alcohols and water alone, although we have not quantified the decrease in performance.
Research Scientist
Department of Microbiology
Monash University