An important tool in biochemical research is the\u00a0centrifuge, which through rapid spinning\u00a0imposes\u00a0high centrifugal forces on suspended particles, or even molecules in solution, and causes separations of such matter on the basis of differences in weight. Thus, red cells may be separated from\u00a0plasma\u00a0of blood, nuclei from mitochondria in cell homogenates, and one\u00a0protein\u00a0from another in complex mixtures. Proteins are separated by\u00a0ultracentrifugation\u2014very high speed spinning; with appropriate photography of the protein layers as they form in the centrifugal field, it is possible to determine the molecular weights of proteins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another property of biological molecules that has been exploited for separation and analysis is their\u00a0electrical charge. Amino acids and proteins possess net positive or negative charges according to the acidity of the solution in which they are\u00a0dissolved. In an\u00a0electric field, such molecules adopt different rates of migration toward positively (anode) or negatively (cathode) charged poles and permit separation. Such separations can be effected in solutions or when the proteins saturate a stationary medium such as\u00a0cellulose\u00a0(filter paper),\u00a0starch, or acrylamide gels. By appropriate colour reactions of the proteins and scanning of colour intensities, a number of proteins in a mixture may be measured. Separate proteins may be isolated and identified by\u00a0electrophoresis, and the purity of a given protein may be determined. (Electrophoresis of human\u00a0hemoglobin\u00a0revealed the abnormal hemoglobin in sickle-cell anemia, the first definitive example of a \u201cmolecular disease.\u201d)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An important tool in biochemical research is the\u00a0centrifuge, which through rapid spinning\u00a0imposes\u00a0high centrifugal forces on suspended particles, or even molecules in solution, and causes separations of such matter on the basis of differences in weight. Thus, red cells may be separated from\u00a0plasma\u00a0of blood, nuclei from mitochondria in cell homogenates, and one\u00a0protein\u00a0from another in complex mixtures. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biochemistry"],"Cooking_time":"","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2059,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058\/revisions\/2059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}