Analytical Ultracentrifugation
"Analytical ultracentrifugation is perhaps the most striking contribution of physical chemistry to the study of biological macromolecules"
J D Watson "The Molecular Biology of the Gene"
Analytical ultracentrifugation is the direct method which gives information about the mass, structure and interactions of purified proteins in dilute solutions. The method is addressed to study the hydrodynamic behaviour of biomolecules subjected to a centrifugal field. The systems subjected to analytical ultracentrifugation study could be as follows:
- Protein mass, shape and stoichiometry.
- Protein-protein/lipid/nucleic acid interactions.
- Membrane proteins and their complexes.
- Glycosylated proteins and their complexes.
Modern analytical ultracentrifugation is not simply a technique - it is part of global description of biomolecular systems in-vitro
What we will do:
- formulate the initial model,
- build all prior knowledge into the model,
- fit all start-to-end experimental data to the model,
- treat globally sedimentation experiments,
- coincide the sedimentation/hydrodynamic analysis of the system with other biophysical analysis such as x-ray/neutron small angle scattering, dynamic light scattering, calorimetry.
