Protein quality is key to getting consistent results
Most of the time, you don’t know something’s wrong until you’re several steps into your experiment and you see inconsistent results. What if you could simply check the quality of your sample before you even start? That’s where Tycho comes in.
Tycho tells you so much about the quality of your protein
It tells you about presence, purity, concentration, functionality and similarity — in a single experiment. These can all be measured simply by determining whether your protein is structurally intact or properly folded.
Analyze under native conditions
There’s no need to fluorescently label or modify your sample — that means no assay development and only real results.
Get answers in minutes
Generate informative data in just 3 minutes — it makes deciding what to do next that much easier. Watch video
Easily test any protein sample type
Forget dialyzing or doing sample dilutions. Determine the quality of any protein in any type of buffer over a wide range of concentrations.
Save scarce bench space
Tycho’s small footprint doesn’t take up a lot of bench space which means more space for you!
Conserve precious sample
Purifying protein because you’ve run out of sample is like 🤦♂️or 🤦♀️. Not only can checking your protein’s quality help you run less experimental parameters later, but you only need 10 µL of sample.
I put every protein in Tycho first. The data is very reproducible in our hands. Just mix your samples, put the capillaries in and 3 minutes later you have your results. It’s the only equipment I would recommend to anyone working on proteins because there are no downsides in having a Tycho.
Dr. Stefan Gajewski
Scientist I, Nurix Inc., California
Finally get answers to questions you routinely encounter
Are impurities causing these questionable results?
Is this batch of protein the same as the last one?
Were these samples properly stored?
Did the protein lose its functionality?
Was the right amount of material used in the assay?
Is there even any protein in this sample prep? ?
Is the salt, pH or buffer affecting the protein?
Verify protein quality at any step in your workflow
Initial purification
Test for the presence of your protein
Chromatography steps
Pinpoint the fraction that contains your isolated protein and check its functionality
Purifying protein
Confirm batch similarity, purity, functionality and concentration
Storing samples
Determine the right buffer storage conditions. After thawing, compare similarity, purity, functionality and concentration to data obtained before storage.
Assay development
Check the concentration of your protein and test if it’s functional or has activity
Are you working with Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR)?
Make your SPR workflow smoother, more efficient, and less costly with Tycho.
Measure many sample types
Antibodies
Kinases
Multimeric complexes
Transcription factors
Membrane proteins
Tagged proteins
Point mutations
Enzymes
Virus-like particles (VLPs)/Capsids
Functionalized proteins (mAbs)
And more
Use Tycho for your practical everyday applications
Identify optimal storage conditions for fridge, freezer, or -80 °C
Confirm sample quality of crystals before x-ray crystallography experiments
Ensure samples are of the right quality for NMR experiments
Monitor the presence of your protein during any purification step
Check quality of samples prior to cryo-EM
Determine how much protein is isolated and its concentration
Examine binding interactions, quick and label-free
Monitor impact of salts, pH and ions when developing or testing buffer recipes
Gain quick insights on protein quality to assist in assay development
Tycho NT.6 was adopted by all our lab members in no time, providing crucial quality information not detectable before. It will become a standard tool for everyone working on protein biochemistry.
Dr. Gregor Witte
Principal Investigator, K.P. Hopfner lab, Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich
How does Tycho identify sample quality?
Tycho verifies protein quality by looking at the structural integrity (or foldedness) of a protein. As a thermal ramp is applied, the changes in the intrinsic fluorescence, detected at both 350 nm and 330 nm, from tryptophan and tyrosine residues in the protein are measured. These changes in fluorescence signal indicate transitions in the folding state of a protein. The temperature at which a transition occurs is called the inflection temperature (Ti). The fluorescence is recorded during the thermal run, plotted as ratio and used to calculate Ti. Its initial value along with the change in signal over the run (Δ ratio) is also recorded.
Verify the quality of your starting material or similarity between batches
With Tycho, compare the structural integrity or unfolding profile of that new sample prep to your reference sample of the right quality to verify they are similar. If they differ, you may have a sample of lower quality that contains contaminants—this indicates the need to further purify it or optimize your purification workflow. Having confidence that you are working with the highest quality samples all the time, will result in more consistent results.
Want to get more technical?
Check for sample presence, amount and purity
Once you’ve run Tycho to confirm results from traditional methods, you’ll realize that the results from Tycho not only show you the presence of your protein but also if impurities are present. And, it even lets you determine the concentration of it. So in the future, shelve those traditional methods that take time and use up a lot of your precious material.
Determine the right buffer recipe for storage or assay development
Use Tycho to identify the right buffer recipe for storage or assay development to preserve the quality of your protein. Quickly screen different buffers, additives and excipients as well as storage temperatures and time periods to determine the right conditions for your protein samples. Use this information to help optimize your assay conditions for future experiments. In the end, you’ll spend less time generating unnecessary batches of protein.
Quickly confirm functionality
Tycho tests functionality in 3 minutes and tells you if your protein is interacting with other molecules. Since it does this in a label-free way with very little sample, it’s much easier than traditional methods, so now there’s no reason why you wouldn’t do it earlier.
Know protein quality early on
During monoclonal antibody therapeutic development, knowing structural integrity as early as possible is one of the strongest indicators of functionality and potential drug efficacy.
A monoclonal antibody (Herceptin) was treated with two oxidation conditions and run on Tycho to test the effects of the treatment on sample quality. A longer oxidation treatment caused more unfolding of the mAb as indicated by the increased initial ratio reading. In addition, increased oxidation treatment causes a left shift in the detected first inflection temperature suggesting possible structural changes to particular domains in the protein (left). MicroScale Thermophoresis (MST) was performed to confirm the effect oxidation treatment can have on Herceptin binding affinity (right).
Hit the bench running
Using Tycho is super easy — just follow the onscreen prompts to start an experiment. Assign names to your samples while your experiment is running to keep your records in order. When it’s done, simply export both the raw data, automatically analyzed results, and summary figures in a convenient ready-to-share format.
Explore the clouds with us
Tycho.Cloud offers advanced, cloud-based data analysis features for Tycho, like plotting and comparing your data across runs, automatically analyzing your thermal shift experiments, and more!
Anybody with access to a Tycho is invited to try out Tycho.Cloud. It’s still in beta, so it’s not perfect yet. Give it a whirl and help us build an awesome product.
Small amounts of sample is all you need
You can do so much (or so little) using Tycho and minute amounts of sample. Accurate results are obtained using tiny, precisely constructed glass capillaries so analysis can be done on virtually any sample type. No pipetting is required since sample is taken up by capillary force directly into the capillary, so you’re not wasting your precious sample.
Introducing Tycho, 3 minutes will change everything