Using UV-absorbance of intrinsic dithiothreitol (DTT) during RP-HPLC as a measure of experimental redox potential in vitro

Many in vitro experiments aimed at studying the response of thiol-containing proteins to changes in environmental redox potentials use dithiothreitol (DTT) to maintain a preset redox environment throughout the experiments. However, the gradual oxidation of DTT during the course of the experiments, as well as the interaction between DTT and other components in the system, can significantly alter the initial redox potential and complicate data interpretation. Having an internal reporter for the actual redox potential of the assayed sample, facilitates the direct correlation between biochemical findings and the experimental redox status. Reversed-Phase High Performance Liquid Chromatography (RP-HPLC) is a widely used, well-established tool for the analysis and purification of biomolecules, including proteins and peptides. Here, we describe a simple, robust, and quantitative RP-HPLC method we developed and tested to determine the experimental redox potential of an in vitro sample at the time of the experiment. It exploits the specific UV-absorbance of the oxidized intrinsic DTT in the samples and retains the high resolving power and high sensitivity of RP-HPLC with UV detection.