What is Bovine Serum Albumin?

At Desert Biologicals we love cows.  They are big, cute looking and happen to be the source of our number one product Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA). What is BSA?

Found this great blog post from over the weekend explaining in easy to read detail, what exactly BSA is and all the wonderful applications it can be used for.

Courtesy of our friends at goatelecom

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“Bovine serum albumin, also referred to as “BSA,” is a serum albumin protein that has multiple biochemical applications. To start with, let’s look at where BSA comes from. BSA can be produced through a purification of bovine, or cow, blood. Due to the size of the cattle industry, bovine blood is a readily available resource.”

“Now what are some of the applications of or uses for bovine serum albumin? BSA is often used in cell culture media. Cell culture media is a growth medium or culture medium typically in the form of a gel or liquid that is used to support the growth of microorganisms. When trying to grow animal cells outside of the body, serum proteins are required in order to facilitate that growth. Bovine serum albumin is well known for its high stability, which makes it an ideal component. BSA also is used in “restriction digest,” which is a process in molecular biology that prepares DNA for analysis and processing.”

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Full story here