General description

Potassium is an intracellular cation with just 2% of total body K⁺ inhabiting the extracellular fluid. The distribution of K⁺ between the intracellular and extracellular space is analyzed by the action of several transport pathways like Na⁺-K⁺-ATPase, the Na⁺-K⁺-2Cl-cotransporter NKCC1, the four KCCs, and a plethora of K⁺ channels. Also, skeletal muscle comprises almost 75% of total body potassium and elicits considerable influence on extracellular K⁺. Potassium chloride is consumed orally to prevent or correct potassium depletion caused by diuretic use or other conditions. It is used as a food supplement and salt substitute.

Application

Potassium chloride solution has been used as a component of:

multiple annealing and looping based amplification cycles (MALBAC) lysis buffer to digest proteins for single-cell multiomics sequencing
single-cell tagged reverse transcription (STRT) buffer, and STRT-RT buffer for single-cell RNA-sequencing
phosphate buffer saline (PBS) to wash transfected cells