ABSTRACT
The idea of using immobilized metal-chelate complexes in ligand-exchange chromatography for the separation of amino acids, nucleic acids, peptides, and proteins was developed in the early 1960s [1-3]. In 1975, Porath and coworkers [4] introduced immobilized metal-ion affinity chromatography (IMAC) as a purification technique for biomolecules. IMAC is based on the solution-phase interactions of chelated metal ions with proteins and other biological compounds. Other terms used to describe this method are metal-chelate chromatography and metal-ion interaction chromatography.
