ABSTRACT
This book is mainly concerned with the principles of how proteins work, rather than the experiments that uncovered the principles. But clearly experiments are vital, and the results (and the papers that present them) can only be appreciated if one has some understanding of the experimental techniques underlying protein science. This topic could easily be a textbook on its own (and indeed there are many such books), so I have necessarily had to be somewhat selective in the material presented in this chapter. In particular, I have only described the outlines of how the techniques work, my guiding principle being whether the descriptions enable a reader to understand the current research literature at least roughly. I have therefore given more detail about some topics (for example, NMR) than others. I have also tried to evaluate the techniques, rather than merely describe them. My evaluations are obviously biased by personal experience, which I hope is not atypical. Inevitably, some readers will be very familiar with some of these techniques, and completely baffled by others. There is no substitute for going into a lab and discussing methods with the practitioners!
