how do you purify protiens – Drug Development Zone

Question: how do you purify protiens
- Keywords:
  nutrition,
  proteins,
  purify,
  work
Asked by ibrahimabdelaal to Jack, Jon, Tom, Yalda on 19 Mar 2013.
- Tom Branson answered on 19 Mar 2013:
  
  To do this, we give some bacteria a piece of DNA that has the code for the protein we want. Then the bacteria grow and make lots of protein because of this extra bit of DNA they have.
  
  The bacteria are then smashed apart (we call this harvesting!) and they release everything that was in the cells including DNA and lots of other proteins. To purify the specific protein we want, there are a number of different methods but usually this involves affinity chromatography. This means that the whole liquid is put through a resin and the protein we want sticks to the resin whilst everything else washes off. We can then get the proetin off the resin and voila! The whole process takes about 4 days.
  
  Lots of small drugs and molecules are also being made by bacteria in labs now because it is easy to let the bacteria act as a factory doing the work for you.
- Yalda Javadi answered on 19 Mar 2013:
  
  What Tom said!
  
  It’s all about affinity chromatography!
- Jack Heal answered on 19 Mar 2013:
  
  Yep, affinity chromatography, that’s the one! I also use something similar called size-exclusion chromatography. Instead of separating proteins by their stickiness, you separate them by their size.
  This is useful if the stickiness approach doesn’t get you completely pure protein.
  
  It’s quite time-consuming and can be frustrating when it goes wrong. On the other hand, it’s pretty amazing that we can make the molecules we want using bacteria and some fancy protein sieves!
- anon answered on 19 Mar 2013:
  
  I don’t – I rely on people like Tom to do it for me (thanks Tom!)

Question: how do you purify protiens

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