A rapid, sensitive method for quantitating subunits in purified ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase preparations.

Studies of the interactions of the large and small subunits of ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase require a knowledge of the concentrations of the subunits present in various preparations and their ratio. Since existing sodium dodecyl sulfate-gel electrophoresis procedures proved quantitatively unreliable, a technique based on high performance-gel filtration was developed. The latter is most reliable, takes only about 30 minutes to perform, and detects a minimum of 0.25 micrograms of each subunit.