Why are my ConA beads sticky? Does it matter?

ConA beads typically become clumpy/sticky after overnight incubation at 4˚C. Some clumping is normal, and should not impact your data, especially if you are starting with 500,000 high-quality cells. Beads can be dispersed by gentle pipetting. The end of a pipette tip can be cut off to help mix or preserve delicate cells.

However, if you start with a sample of poor quality - meaning lysed cells and/or poor cellular integrity - you may experience more ConA bead clumping.

Excessive bead clumping leads to sample loss, reduces yields, and negatively impacts quality. Thus, it is key to minimize bead clumping as much as possible during your CUT&RUN experiment. During pAG-MNase binding and digestion, it is particularly important that ConA beads are evenly resuspended.