[FeLiXe]

Hi, could someone tell me what Tris-Cl stands for? I only find the abbreviation everywhere.

[Borek]

TRIS stands for Hydroxymethylaminoethane NH2C(CH2OH)3, probably as hydrochloride.

[Yggdrasil]

Tris-Cl or Tris-HCl is a common buffer used extensively in molecular biology and biochemistry.  The Cl/HCl indicates that the pH of the buffer was adjusted using HCl (so, for example Tris-glycine would indicate that glycine was used to pH the solution).

[AWK]

Tris image is missing in forum chemical structures.

[FeLiXe]

thanks.
It's always nice to know what alle the substances are that I use. It was my buffer in gel-electrophoresis, we took Tris-Cl for our separating gel and Tris-glycine for the collecting gel.

Why do you use Tris? Does it have nice solubility features in those gels, why not just use ammonia?

how would IUPAC call it:
2-Amino-2,2-bishydroxymethyl-1-hydroxy-ethane or maybe
1,1,1-Trishydroxymethyl-methane-amine (if you ignore the longest chain)?

[Yggdrasil]

Why do you use Tris? Does it have nice solubility features in those gels, why not just use ammonia?

Tris is commonly used in molecular biology because its pKa is around 8.0 which gives it a good buffering capacity in solutions near physiological pH (which is around 7.4).  Ammonia, on the other hand, produces a more basic solution when added to water and does not have a good buffering capacity near physiological pH.  Plus, ammonia is volitile so over time your solute would evaporate (this would be especially troublesome for PAGE becaue gels get quite warm during the electrophoresis).

Tris isn't the only buffer that you can use for PAGE. For example, MES, MOPS, bis-tris, and other buffers are commonly used for PAGE.

[Borek]

its pKa is around 8.0 which gives it a good buffering capacity in solutions near physiological pH (which is around 7.4).

See this discussion: buffer capacity.

[FeLiXe]

ok thanks, that makes sense