With Automation, HPLC Systems Tailored To Research Needs

Sidebar: It's Okay To Be Fast High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is a mainstay of biological and chemical research, analytical, and production laboratories. After a researcher loads a sample mixture, the instrument pumps mixtures of solvents-usually at high pressures-through a column packed with a material that slows individual compounds to different degrees, separating the substances as they pass through the column. Once the journey is complete, a detector and often an automatic fra

Written byJames Kling

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Sidebar: It's Okay To Be Fast

BRAINY: Isco's Foxy 200 collects HPLC fractions by time, volume, or peak.

"Ultimately these systems are a set of pumps, a controller, and a fraction collector," says Roland Strong, a protein crystallographer at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle who studies protein interactions involved in the mucosal immune system. Strong observes that "there must be hundreds of different types" of separation columns that users can plug in. That versatility allows researchers with varying needs to share similar setups by simply exchanging columns and solvent types, easing the strain on everyone's budget. For example, Strong says, "there are three protein crystallography labs here: We each have a different company's [instrumentation] system, and we swap columns back and forth."

Columns may separate on the basis of a sample's size, ionic character, hydrophobicity, affinity for another molecule, or isoelectric point (the pH at which a ...

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