Automated Protein Purification for Structural Studies

Abstract

Structural studies require fairly large amounts (milligram scale) of pure and homogeneous target proteins. To ease the enormous task of performing these studies in a high-throughput mode, a reliable and easy-to-handle purification system is needed. This paper describes the automated purification of (His)6 and glutathione S-transferase (GST)-tagged recombinant proteins using the ÄKTA™ 3D kit with the ÄKTAexplorer 100 chromatography system (Amersham Biosciences, Uppsala, Sweden). With this combination, it is possible to automatically purify up to six proteins within a single day.