Do you spend your day running HPLC or other lengthy column chromatography to purify your proteins or other biological entities? Deborah F. Kelly and co-workers have found the perfect solution for a rapid purification of proteins and in-situ imaging using transmission electron microscopy (TEM).
The purification of biological complexes such as proteins remains the rate-limiting step for structural studies in the electron microscopy (EM) field. In a recent RSC Advances article, the team led by Kelly developed an improved affinity capture device capable of purifying tagged biomacromolecules of interest while viewing them in a liquid-flow environment within a TEM column. The purification component of the device works at high specificity and nanogram sensitivity.
“The method also lends itself for use with antibodies against cell surface proteins to isolate whole cells. The isolation of rare cells or cancer cells may be possible in combination with TEM imaging. This opens a new avenue for the visual screening of therapeutic interventions aimed at multiscale imaging—from the molecular to the cellular levels. Overall, the use of affinity capture devices and live TEM imaging provide a unique platform to view active biological processes at nanometer resolution,” say the US scienstists.
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The development of affinity capture devices—a nanoscale purification platform for biological in situ transmission electron microscopy
Katherine Degen , Madeline Dukes , Justin R. Tanner and Deborah F. Kelly
RSC Adv., 2012, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/C2RA01163H
