Good day. I want to clarify that I am not trying to sound like a smart ass in my first topic. If you were trying to lyse a cell by making it exploding with water in th medium, you would want to use a less concentrated ion medium than inside the cell. That's the principle of reverse osmosis water purification. So, maybe, you could try to use distilled water instead filtered water for the first step, and then add some MgSO4, or even concentrated (boiled for a long time) filtered water, in the rest of the procedure to push the alkaloids into the biphase. Peace
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