What Is Protein Purification?

Protein purification is the term for a series of processes carried out in a laboratory that isolate a single type of protein from either a mass of biological tissue or some other mixture, like a lab culture.

Preparative Purification

• Preparative protein purification describes techniques used to prepare a homogeneous batch of protein for large-scale pharmaceutical or food product manufacturing. For instance, drug makers use purification to isolate the protein insulin. Food manufacturers use purification to isolate soy proteins.

Analytical Purification

• Scientists also isolate proteins so they can identify them and study their function and structure, among other things. Analytical purification techniques usually aim to collect a smaller batch of protein than preparative purification methods.

Purification Strategies

• There are hundreds of methods used to extract and purify proteins, depending on the extraction application and type of sample the scientist starts with. Generally, purification involves processes that take advantage of a protein's weight, chemical properties and the way it binds to other chemical structures.

Purification Kits

• Those conducting lab work can purchase kits that have everything needed to carry out established purification processes. Usually, these kits include gel filtration columns and other filters. Users feed a protein solution through a series of filters as directed by the instructions until they isolate the desired protein.

Continuing Research

• Proteomics is the field involved with identifying the proteins encoded in an organism's DNA and how those proteins function in cells and interact with one another. New research is pioneering techniques that can purify a large number of different protein samples for use in proteomics studies.