ABSTRACT

There are two main reasons why one would wish to purify proteins: either for analytical studies, or for preparative studies. In this book we do not concentrate on preparative studies (an advanced biochemistry book may be consulted for this), but on analytical work partly, with a particular focus on molecular cell biology applications such as cellular localization, proteinprotein interactions, protein-DNA interactions, and so on. As such, the techniques described here for protein production and purification only correspond to partial (or semi-) purifications. Readers should also be reminded once again that since this is not a laboratory manual, this chapter will provide no technical details, but rather only the background and working principles behind some of the selected methods (although not every possible method can be discussed due to space constraints).