Lithium borate

Chembox new
Name = Lithium boric acid
ImageFile = Lithium_borate.jpg
ImageName = Lithium boric acid
OtherNames = Lithium borate

Section1 = Chembox Identifiers
CASNo = 12007-60-2
Section2 = Chembox Properties
Formula = Li₂B₄O₇
MolarMass = 169.11 g/mol
Appearance = white powder
Density = 2.4 g/cm³, solid
Solubility = moderately soluble
MeltingPt = 917°C
BoilingPt =
Section7 = Chembox Hazards
ExternalMSDS = [http://www.physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/LI/lithium_borate.html External MSDS]
NFPA-H = 2
NFPA-R = 0
NFPA-F = 0

Lithium borate (Li₂B₄O₇) is the lithium salt of boric acid.

Uses

Lithium borate can be used in the laboratory as buffer for gel electrophoresis of DNA and RNA. It has a lower conductivity, produces crisper resolution, and can be run at higher speeds than can gels made from TBE or TAE (5-50V/cm as compared to 5-10V/cm). At a given voltage, the heat generation and thus the gel temperature is much lower than with TBE/TAE buffers, therefore the voltage can be increased to speed up electrophoresis so that a gel run takes only a fraction of the usual time. Downstream applications, such as isolation of DNA from a gel slice or Southern blot analysis, work as expected with lithium boric acid gels. Lithium borate is also an ingredient for use in making glasses and ceramics.

The recipe for 1 liter of 20X lithium borate (LB) DNA electrophoresis buffer is as follows: To 950 mL of dH2O, add 8.392 g of lithium hydroxide monohydrate and 36 g of boric acid, pH should be near 8.2. Adjust volume to 1 L and filter sterilize. This yields a final working concentration of ~10 mM lithium borate and a pH of 8.5. No EDTA is used because this would increase conductivity and is unnecessary in most applications.(adapted from [Brody, J.R., Kern, S.E.,Sodium boric acid: a tris-free, cooler conductive medium for DNA electrophoresis, "BioTechniques", 36(2), pp.214-215, 2004.] )

Sodium borate is similar to lithium borate and has nearly all of its advantages at a somewhat lower cost, but the lithium buffer permits use of even higher voltages due to the lower conductivity of lithium ions as compared to sodium ions.

References

External links

* [http://www.npi.gov.au/database/substance-info/profiles/15.html National Pollutant Inventory - Boron and compounds]