Principle and applications of the protein-purification-parameter screening system.

For the purification of a target protein, liquid chromatography is the method of choice, if its activity has to be maintained. The selection of optimum parameters will improve in proportion to the number of individual parameters varied in initial experiments. Here a fast screening method is described, which utilizes automated parallel chromatographic experiments in the batch mode in 96-well plates. The principle of this protein-purification-parameter screening (PPS) system is demonstrated with a mixture of four proteins. An application of PPS for the determination of a purification step of an angiotensin-II-generating enzyme from a crude tissue extract is shown.