Glycine is commonly used as a component in Tris-glycine and Tris-glycine-SDS running buffers for polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, a component of Towbin's transfer buffer for Western blots, a buffer substance in cryoenzymology, in osmotic pressure maintenance in isoelectric focusing of erythrocytes, salting-in effect in protein chemistry, and as a buffer component in the coupled phosphatase-kinase reaction for end labelling of restriction fragments. The growth requirements of various microorganisms is reported in the Handbook of Microbiology.