Biomatrica's PCRboost

PCR yield enhancer for difficult samples.

PCRboost may in fact be something as simple as around 10% trehalose solution in some weakly buffered Tris.

Evidence:

     - MSDS says it's a trade secret. Because the company says it's a "novel PCR enhancer" it definitely not not a betaine. Company's

wording suggest that it works by increasing thermostability of Taq polymerase ("use less polymerase). The limited chemical data point to a sugar. The first educated guess then would be that it is a trehalose.

     - Trehalose has been described in the literature as a potent PCR enhancer greatly increasing termostability of DNA polymerase:

link1, link2, link3 (note how trehalose seems to be equally effective at a wide range of concentrations and Biomatrica suggests to just use PCRboost in place of water in PCR reactions.

     - Googling +biomatrica +trehalose reveals not such a big surprise - trehalose is a key component of several Biomatrica products! (See, for example, here)

     - Biomatrica applied for a couple of US patents for technologies that involve the use of trehalose in preservation of biological samples (search Google patents).

     - MSDS for Biomatrica products that definitely contain trehalose list identical toxicology data to the ones found in MSDS for the "trade secret" component of PCRboost. This cannot be a coincidence - MSDS is a serious and highly regulated business.

One thing is clear - Biomatrica makes synthetic trehalose (as opposed to most commercial preparations that are derived from biosources). It is not clear whether this has something to do with purity or patentability/licensing issues or, as Biomatrica is said to claim, "a synthetic compound with higher thermostability than the natural compounds, giving higher protection to the stored sample”. 

"Molecular Biology grade" trehalose is available from numerous manufactures, and its about 1000X cheaper than PCRboost. Worth tryring out if you anticipate a need for PCRboost on a regular basis.

More evidence needed:

- If you ever get hold of PCRboost, consider tasting it. Trehalose tastes sweet.  This should be safe (but do it at your own risk!) because PCRboost's MSDS makes it clear that it only contains tiny bit of TrisHCl and the sekrit compund - the one that's not toxic to animals at very, very high doses).

- PCRboost is said to have density of 1.269 g/cm3 at 20C. Care to measure what 1 ml of 10% trehalose weighs?

- A quick and dirty mass-spec run on a tiny bit of PCRboost will probably tell the whole story!