Two new non-barbiturate buffers for electrophoresis of serum proteins on cellulose acetate membranes.

Two new non-barbiturate buffers have been formulated for serum protein electrophoresis on cellulose acetate membranes. Both buffers give five distrinct fractions and are suitable for all systems, but have been primarily designed to meet the needs of the Gelman "Sepratek" system. One buffer is a tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane (Tris)/hippurate formulation; the other is composed of Tris/N-[tris(hydroxymethyl)methyl]glycine (Tricine)/sodium chloride/sodium salicylate. Both buffers allow reliable quantitation of protein fractions, giving results that correlated well with those obtained from barbiturate separations. The major advantage of these buffers is that they do not contain drugs of abuse.