Dextran Sulfate Sodium Salt (400,000-600,000 M.Wt), 1g

Dextran sulfate is a polyanionic derivative of dextran produced by esterification of Dextran with chlorosulphonic acid. The sulfur content is approximately 17% which corresponds to an average of 1.9 sulfate groups per glucosyl residue of the dextran molecule. Dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) is the sodium salt which is a white to off-white powder freely soluble in water and salt solutions to form a stable, clear solution. The high purity and reproducible quality enables its application in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology industry. Dextran Sulfate Sodium (DSS) has proven to have versatile value in Biomedical/clinical research. DSS can be used as an anticoagulant, antiviral as well as antilipemic agent. DSS increases the rate of nucleic acids hybridization. In the presence of 10% dextran sulfate sodium salt (DSS) the rate of re-annealing of DNA in solution was increased by about 10 times. This observation was later extended to the hybridization of single or double-stranded probes to DNA or RNA immobilized on filter paper. The addition of 10% dextran sulfate may increase the rate of hybridization of randomly cleaved double-stranded DNA probes to immobilized nucleic acids by as much as 100 times. Dextran sulfate sodium salt may be used as an accelerant to decrease the time required for probe annealing. DSS may be included in the hybridization buffer when the rate of hybridization is a limiting factor in detecting rare sequences or it may be included in the hybridization buffer when a limited amount of probe is available. DSS also functions as an accelerant by excluding the nucleic acid from the volume of solution occupied by the polymer, thereby, increasing the effective probe concentration. Antiviral – Baba et al., have shown in In Vitro studies that DSS inhibits the binding of various enveloped viruses including Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Herpes Virus (HSV) and Cytomegalovirus (CMV) to cells.