Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Any interesting chemistry to be done with Guanidinium Thiocyanate

AlXe - 10-7-2022 at 07:01

I have acquired some Lysis Buffer used in RNA extraction. I'm not particularly interested in Biochem but was wondering if I can use it as as a precursor to more useful chemical reagents. I am aware of the dangers of mixing it with acids but can anyone think of anything worth doing with it. Literature on it is very tailored to RNA Extraction.





[Edited on 10-7-2022 by AlXe]

woelen - 10-7-2022 at 09:46

Thiocyanates are quite interesting in combination with transition metals. Nearly all transition metals form colorful and quite reactive coordination complexes with thiocanate ion.

Usually, experiments with these transition metals are done with sodium thiocyanate, potassium thiocyanate or ammonium thiocyanate, but most likely this guanidinium salt also works. I'm not sure how guanidine and its protonated cation interact in those experiments though. Just give it a try.

Metacelsus - 10-7-2022 at 12:43

Quote:
I'm not particularly interested in Biochem


Why not? Biochem is super interesting! You can make some colorful fluorescent proteins to go along with your transition metal complexes.

AlXe - 10-7-2022 at 13:15

Quote: Originally posted by Metacelsus  
Quote:
I'm not particularly interested in Biochem


Why not? Biochem is super interesting! You can make some colorful fluorescent proteins to go along with your transition metal complexes.


I'm interested now. It's just a rabbit hole that I cant commit the time to unless I know why I want to. I got pretty good at RNA Extraction in RT-qPCR but beyond that my interest is general hobby chemistry as you see on YouTube.
Any links to what you have stated would be appreciated.

Metacelsus - 11-7-2022 at 02:59

The Odin (Josiah Zayner) sells a "Bioengineering 101" kit that is quite good: https://www.the-odin.com/bioe101/

Once you've learned to transform plasmids you can use tons of good ones from https://www.addgene.org/