We have determined the major ingredients of the commercially available reag
ents M-PER, Y-PER, and B-PER from Pierce Chemical Co. using electrospray ma
ss spectrometry. These three proprietary reagents have been widely used in
the biochemical community as cell membrane dissolving tools during the init
ial step of protein purification. However, the identity and mechanism of th
ese reagents remained unknown. In this paper, we identified these reagents
as 3-[(3-cholamidopropyl) dimethylammonio]-l-propanesulfonate, N-tetradecyl
-N,N-dimethyl-3-ammonio-1-propanesulfonate, and n-octyl-beta -D-thioglucopy
ranoside, respectively. In addition, we wish to stress here the increasing
importance of the role of electrospray mass spectrometry in the analysis of
such proprietary biological preparations which are increasingly finding th
eir way into the biochemical literature.