Lithium acetate

Lithium acetate
Identifiers
CAS number	546-89-4 Y
PubChem	3474584
	RTECS number	AI545000
Properties
Molecular formula	C2H3LiO2
Molar mass	65.99 g mol−1
Appearance	crystal
Density	1.26 g/cm3
Melting point	286 °C
Solubility in water	45.0 g/100 mL[1]
Hazards
MSDS	External MSDS
Y (verify) (what is: Y/N?) Except where noted otherwise, data are given for materials in their standard state (at 25 °C (77 °F), 100 kPa)
Infobox references

Lithium acetate (CH₃COOLi) is a salt of lithium and acetic acid.

Uses

Lithium acetate is used in the laboratory as buffer for gel electrophoresis of DNA and RNA. It has a lower electrical conductivity and can be run at higher speeds than can gels made from TAE buffer (5-30V/cm as compared to 5-10V/cm). At a given voltage, the heat generation and thus the gel temperature is much lower than with 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 when using lithium acetate gels.

Lithium boric acid or sodium boric acid are usually preferable to lithium acetate or TAE when analyzing smaller fragments of DNA (less than 500 bp) due to the higher resolution of borate-based buffers in this size range as compared to acetate buffers.

Lithium acetate is also used to permeabilize the cell wall of yeast for use in DNA transformation. It is believed that the beneficial effect of LiAc is caused by its chaotropic effect; denaturing DNA, RNA and proteins.^[2]

References

• Brody, JR; Kern, SE (2004). "History and principles of conductive media for standard DNA electrophoresis.". Analytical Biochemistry 333 (1): 1–13. doi:10.1016/j.ab.2004.05.054. PMID 15351274.