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PIPES is the common name for piperazine-N,N′-bis(2-ethanesulfonic acid), and is a frequently used buffering agent in biochemistry. It is an ethanesulfonic acid buffer developed by Good et al. in the 1960s.

PIPES has two pKa values. One pKa (6.76 at 25°C) is near the physiological pH which makes it useful in cell culture work. Its effective buffering range is 6.1-7.5 at 25° C. The second pKa value is at 2.67 with a buffer range of from 1.5-3.5.

Applications

PIPES has been documented minimizing lipid loss when buffering glutaraldehyde histology in plant and animal tissues.

Fungal zoospore fixation for fluorescence microscopy and electron microscopy were optimized with a combination of glutaraldehyde and formaldehyde in PIPES buffer. It has a negligible capacity to bind divalent ions.