Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA)

BSA is a serum albumin protein that has numerous biochemical applications. It is also used as a nutrient in cell and microbial culture. In restriction digests, BSA is used to stabilize some enzymes during digestion of DNA and to prevent adhesion of the enzyme to reaction tubes and other vessels. This protein does not affect other enzymes that do not need it for stabilization. BSA is also commonly used to determine the quantity of other proteins, by comparing an unknown quantity of protein to known amounts of BSA. BSA is used because of its stability, its lack of effect in many biochemical reactions, and its low cost since large quantities of it can be readily purified from bovine blood, a byproduct of the cattle industry. The nickname "Fraction V" refers to albumin being the fifth fraction of the original Edwin Cohn purification methodology that made use of differential solubility characteristics of plasma proteins.adopted for production of BSA.