YPD aggregation study

Two summers ago Kenji Doering (an REU student that summer) and I did some protein aggregation studies comparing D2O and DI water. The results were pretty consistent in that proteins don’t aggregate under the same conditions in both samples. What that meant was the D2O is almost certainly better for longevity of chemicals.

A few months ago I noticed that my ypd stocks go noticeably bad after a couple of weeks. But they seemed to last longer in D2O, I just never quantified that. Well now I’m going to.

I have two cuvettes sitting on my bench. One is filled with 1ml of DI YPD and the other is 1ml of D2O YPD. They are sitting next to the benchtop cooler to supply a bit of heat to speed up the aggregation reaction. I will take daily pictures of the solutions to compare the aggregation times of each media. Here is the day=0 time point (on the left is the DI YPD sample, and the right is the 99% D2O sample):

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