Chromatography

What does automated protein purification mean today? What might it look like tomorrow? Bioradiations talks to a variety of users about what they’re doing now to implement automation in their purification processes, and what possibilities they envision that will improve chromatography in the near future.

While using affinity tagging is the preferred method to achieve highly pure protein through recombinant expression, this approach isn’t feasible for all proteins. This tech report describes workflow optimizations using the NGC Chromatography System that allow users to achieve high purities with untagged proteins.

Structural biologist Petr Novák employs the latest techniques to model natural killer cell receptor molecules, research that may one day result in powerful therapies to treat cancer and infections. Go inside the fascinating world of structural characterization and find out how Novák has integrated the NGC™ chromatography system into his effort to visualize these molecules in vivid detail.

In biochromatography, every purification or separation procedure that fails because of instrument malfunction wastes precious lab resources. That’s why Bio-Rad, in designing the NGC chromatography system, found new ways to engineer reliability into the chromatography experience. Here’s how they did it.

Chromatography instruments have a bad reputation in terms of their complexity and difficulty of use. In response, Bio-Rad’s designers and engineers challenged themselves to make the new NGC™ chromatography system as simple and intuitive-to-use as possible. Learn about the new easier-to-use instrument interface they created as a result.

What does it take to configure your own chromatography system? Part three of The Chromatography Chronicles examines how the NGC™ chromatography system adapts and grows to meet changing lab needs, and the modular design that makes this possible.

Is spending hours in the coldroom just an inevitable part of doing chromatography? The engineers and designers at Bio-Rad believed that, with a little innovation, the answer could be “no.” Part two of The Chromatography Chronicles reveals how they freed the NGC™ medium-pressure chromatography system — and its users — from the coldroom’s chilly confines.

Whether through unreliability, lack of workflows, or poor design, chromatography systems can cause major hassles for any lab involved in purifying proteins. Would Bio-Rad be able to solve these longstanding problems? This new series takes an inside look at the development of the NGC medium-pressure chromatography system. This month: bringing customers into the design process.

The Fraser Laboratory in the Dept. of Molecular and Cellular Biology at UC Davis studies protein translation mechanisms by purifying diverse ribosomal proteins and reconstructing the translation complex in vitro. The lab utilized Bio-Rad’s NGC system to overcome specific purification difficulties with their protein while beta-testing the equipment. The NGC system enabled the group to increase their throughput by 25% and also saved substantial training time.

This year the California Separation Science Society will present its annual Scientific Achievement Award to Professor Stellan Hjertén of Uppsala University. The award dinner will be held November 3, 2011 at the Waterfront Hotel in Jack London Square.