It’s the month for fall favorites. Like the growing success of GDN.

While most people are thinking about Indian Summer, crisp nights and a Harvest Moon, we’ve got something entirely different on our mind this month. You see, September has been particularly exciting for glyco-diosgenin (GDN), as customers like you have used it to publish four new Cryo-EM structures of membrane proteins. These include the mouse PIEZO2 mechanosensitive ion channel from the labs of Xueming Li and Bailong Xiao at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, the human TRPM2 channel by the labs of Wei Lu and Juan Du at the Van Andel Institute, the human ATP8A1-CSC50a complex from the labs of Tomohiro Nishizawa and Osamu Nureki at the University of Tokyo, and the TRP channel, TRP1, from the lab of Alex Sobolevsky at Columbia.

As a synthetic drop-in substitute for Digitonin, GDN’s success stories continue to mount, as evidenced by the publication of over 10 structures to date in 2019. This is primarily due to the distinct advantages GDN has over Digitonin, which include higher solubility, zero batch-to-batch variability, no toxic cardiac glycosides, and a lower price.

To learn how others are using GDN successfully in their Cryo-EM experiments, visit us here. And if your wondering what other tools we have to support your studies, check out our Cryo-EM workflow page, where you’ll learn about our fluorinated surfactants, amphipols, protein stability screens, grid boxes, and storage pucks.