Automated Protein Purification for Structural Studies

INTRODUCTION. Structural genomics, also known as structural proteomics, aims to resolve protein functions on a large scale[1]. To determine structures using either X-ray crystallography or NMR, fairly large amounts (>10 mg) of target proteins (which are pure, homogenous, and concentrated) are usually required. A robust and easy-to-use protein purification scheme that can automatically produce numerous proteins in a desired form would increase the throughput of structure determination[2]. Using a new strategy and optimized methods, a newly configured AKTAexplorerTM (AKTA is a trademark of the Amersham Biosciences group. Amersham and Amersham Biosciences are trademarks of Amersham Plc. © Amersham Biosciences AB 2001 – All rights reserved.) 100 can perform automated two-step purification of up to six different proteins serially using two different purification schemes.