Semester 2 Flashcards
How does gel filtration work?
- molecules in solution separated by size as passed though column packed w/ gel matrix
- matrix consists of porous beads
- smaller molecules can diffuse further into pores of beads
- larger molecules can’t enter many pores (if any)
- so largest eluted first and smallest last
- the smaller the molecule, the more of the total vol of column it passes through, so greater the vol of eluent req to elute it
What is the vol of eluent proportional to in gel filtration?
- time taken for collection
What is the result of using small beads in gel filtration matrix?
- less diffusion, so elution peaks sharper and separation better?
What is void volume (Vo)?
- molecules excluded from beads elution vol, equal to liquid outside beads
What is elution volume (Ve)?
- molecules of diff sizes which can enter bead are eluted w/ Ve
What can affect elution vol (Ve), and what does this mean?
- flow rate
- buffer composition
- temp
- so calibration procedure and experiment should be carried out under same conditions
What is whole vol of liquid in column (Vl)?
- elution vol of smallest molecules which can completely penetrate beads?
How is vol of liquid inside beads (Vi) calc?
- Vl - Vo
How is total column vol (Vt) calc?
- Vo + Vi + Vs
What is vol of solid beads (Vs) and what is its normal value?
- varies for diff types of gel filtration matrices and falls in range between 5% and 15% of total column vol?
What are some of the practical uses of gel filtration?
- desalting or buffer exchange
- purification of macromolecules
- analysis of oligomeric state of protein and protein complexes (what we did)
What gel filtration matrix did we use, and what separation range did this provide?
- Sephadex G100 superfine
- separating range = 4000Da to 100,000 Da
What improvement was dev to Sephradex matrix, and what does it involve?
- Superdex
- cross linked agarose beads w/ large pores filled w/ dextran dictating final pore size
- adv is high res w/ short run times and good recovery
How are calibration plots made for gel filtration experiments?
- plot elution vol versus size
- in practise use molecular weight as measure of size of molecules
- but linear relationship between elution vol (Ve) and logMW
- most commonly do Kav vs logMW
What is a Kav value, and how are they calc?
- proportion of vol inside beads available for a given vol
- (Ve - Vo) / (Vt - Vo)
Does Sephradex have good separation power?
- no, relatively poor
What is important during a gel filtration experiment?
- columns must be kept vertical
- avoid disturbances at top of column during sample app
- don’t touch frit when applying sample
- do not change positions of any components and don’t let column run dry
What can gel filtration be used for?
- purify proteins
- determine molecular mass and subunit composition of oligomeric proteins
What is SDS-PAGE used for?
- analyse extent of purity of protein sample and to estimate molecular size of proteins in solution
What is affinity chromatography used for?
- powerful way to select for correctly folded proteins
What can be used to monitor efficiency at each step of purification process?
- calc of enzyme activity and its value per mg of protein (specific activity)
What is enzyme activity, and what are its usual units?
- 1 unit of activity is amount of enzyme needed to convert 1 μmole of substrate to product in 1 min
- units/ml
How is specific activity calc, and what are its usual units?
- enz activity / protein conc
- units/mg
How is total activity calc, and what does it provide?
- enzyme activity x vol of sample
- provides total no. units in sample at this stage
How is % yield calc?
- (total activity after / total activity before) x100
How is a chromatogram generally plotted?
- vol on X-axis (marking elution fractions against approp vol)
- absorbance on Y-axis
- work from right to left when plotting peaks
- harder when lack of points and protein can aggregate non-specifically so some peaks close together
What properties other than MW can affect way protein travels down gel filtration column?
- shape –> globular proteins travel diff to fibrous, which can get into smaller pores than MW would suggest
- affinity for column matrix itself
- fast eq between diff oligomeric states of protein, eg. dimer and tetramer forms
What effects do other properties affecting travel down column have on use of column?
- results need to be treated w/ caution and verified by another technique
- eg. analytical ultracentrifugation or dynamic light scattering
What are the basic principles of SDS-PAGE?
- denature protein w/ heat and anionic detergent SDS
- coat protein in -ve charge from SDS to give uniform charge density
- load sample onto polyacrylamide gel and apply electric field
- protein samples travel towards +ve electrode
- “sieve” proteins through acrylamide matrix and separate out on basis of size
- small proteins travel faster and further into gel
- stain gel and compare proteins under analysis w/ set of known MW markers
Why might result in estimating MW of Hb be diff from gel filtration and SDS-PAGE experiments?
- SDS-PAGE denatures protein sample and breaks up any higher order quaternary structures, so shows just monomer MW
- gel filtration should leave it intact, so show full MW
What can comparing SDS-PAGE and gel filtration results tell you?
- indication of stoichiometry of protein in solution, ie. how many copies of each polypeptide chain are present
What are some chromatographic methods involving direct interaction of proteins w/ column?
- ion exchange chromatography
- hydrophobic interaction chromatography
- affinity chromatography
What does ion exchange chromatography (IEC) separate molecules according to, and how?
- net surface charge
- typically through ionic interactions between charged amino acid side chains and surface charge of ion exchange matrix
What is the isoelectric point (pI), and what do the diff values mean?
- pH at which net charge of protein is 0
- > 7 are basic proteins
- <7 are acidic proteins
- if pI = 7 then neutral
How does ion exchange chromatography work?
- pI used to describe net charge of protein
- under right pH and low salt conditions, a protein can be bound to a column and then eluted by increasing salt concs or by changing pH
What are the 2 types of ion exchange chromatography?
- anion exchange chromatography –> uses +vely charged functional groups to capture -vely charged proteins
- cation exchange chromatography –> uses -vely charged functional groups to capture +vely charged proteins
How does hydrophobic interaction chromatography (HIC)?
- hydrophobic residues exposed on surface of protein to some extent, so can interact w/ hydrophilic groups (phenyl/butyl/ether) under certain conditions
- for protein to bind to HIC matrix water must be removed from surface using high concs of certain salts (often ammonium sulphate)
- proteins then eluted when salt conc decreased
Why is affinity chromatography the most powerful method of chromatography?
- based on specific binding
What is the problem with affinity chromatography and how was this overcome?
- for each enzyme specific matrix has to be created, often difficult, time consuming or impossible
- dev of tagged proteins
How are tags used in affinity chromatography, and what are the most common tags?
- genetically attached to a protein by cloning gene of interest into specialised plasmid, and resulting fusion protein expressed in bacterial cells
- His6, GST, MBP
What are the principles of pseudo-affinity chromatography?
- ligand attached to matrix similar in structure to substrate
- commonly used matrix is cross-linked Heparin (eg. Heparin-Sepharose), used to purify DNA-binding proteins as heparin similar to phosphate chain in DNA
What are the principles of dye-chromatography?
- variant of pseudo-affinity chromatography
- ligands formed by synthetic polycyclic dyes
- ligands show certain structural similarities to cofactors NAD(H)/NADP(H), so widely used for purification of deHase, kinases etc.
What is the procedure for GDH purification using a column packed w/ Remazol-Sepharose?
- app of CFE onto column to allow GDH to bind to matrix
- washing out any unbound material
- elution of bound GDH
- -> by NAD(H) = biospecific, gives high purity, but high conc req often too expensive
- -> or high salt conc = nonspecific, but matrix highly selective so purity still quite high
How is purification factor calc?
- specific activity after / specific activity before
What does it mean to equilibrate a column?
- set the conditions