Like any product being used for DNA and RNA isolation, beads are a potential source of nuclease and nucleic acid contamination. Designed to disrupted prokaryotes in assays sensitive to nuclease and nucleic acids contamination, 100 micron Molecular Biology Grade Zirconium Beads (Zirconium Silicate) are made from Acid Washed Beads by further processing the beads by baking.  The 100 micron Molecular Biology Grade Zirconium beads have been used for investigating bacterial populations in the intestinal lining and looking at microbial populations in environmental samples.

Molecular Biology Grade Beads have all the advantages of Acid Washed Beads but with the value of being safe for molecular biology applications involving nucleic acid extraction of microbial populations from pelleted mucosal digest and solid submucosal tissue in studying the pathogenesis of Crohn’s disease. This type of bead was also commonly used for DNA extraction of algae to understand their relationship with their infecting viruses and their role in the marine carbon cycle.

Beads are washed and baked twice before being packaged aseptically into RNase/DNase-free bottles.

Citation

Chiodini, R. J., Dowd, S. E., Chamberlin, W. M., Galandiuk, S., Davis, B., & Glassing, A. (2015). Microbial population differentials between mucosal and submucosal intestinal tissues in advanced Crohn’s disease of the ileum. PLoS ONE, 10(7). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134382 (DNA extraction of pelleted mucosal digest and submucosal tissue is important to understand the role of submucosal microbiome in the pathogenesis of Crohn’s disease) 

Laber, C. P., Hunter, J. E., Carvalho, F., Collins, J. R., Hunter, E., Schieler, B. M., Boss, E., More, K. D., Frada, M. J., Thamatrakoln, K., Brown, C. M., Haramaty, L., Ossolinski, J. E., Fredricks, H. F., Nissimov, J. I., Vandzura, R., Sheyn, U., Lehahn, Y., Chant, R. J., Martins, A., Coolen, M. J. L., Vardi, A., DiTullio, G. R., Van Mooy, B. a. S., and Bidle, K. D. 2018. Coccolithovirus facilitation of carbon export in the North Atlantic. Nature Microbiology. 3:537–547 (Infections of Emiliania huxleyi blooms by Coccolithoviruses lead to particle aggregation, high zooplankton grazing, and increased downward fluxes of both organic and inorganic carbon)

Thamatrakoln, K., Talmy, D., Haramaty, L., Maniscalco, C., Latham, J. R., Knowles, B., Natale, F., Coolen, M. J. L., Follows, M. J., & Bidle, K. D. (2019). Light regulation of coccolithophore host–virus interactions. The New Phytologist, 221(3), 1289–1302 (Light can significantly influence host-virus interactions through a mechanistic interplay between host metabolic processes, which in turn affects infection dynamics and phytoplankton mortality in the ocean)