| File Last modified on: Wed Nov 18, 2020 22:50:14 |
| Innovation award at the 2016 TechConnect, USA |
| Novel Purification Method for Membrane Proteins Using Engineered Micelles The collaborative efforts of Prof. I. N. N. Namboothiri of the Department of Chemistry, IIT Bombay, and researchers at the Ariel University and Weizmann Institute, Israel have resulted in the development of a novel technique for membrane protein purification. This technology development was presented recently at the Techconnect event in Washington DC, USA. It was identified as one of the top 15% technologies submitted and selected for the Techconnect Innovation Award, 2016. This technology, entitled Novel Purification Method for Membrane Proteins Using Engineered Micelles is fast, needs only a tabletop centrifuge and precipitates membrane proteins in native environment. It relies on a novel mechanism capable of precipitating biological membranes using a new class of micelles under specific conditions, regardless of the membrane protein composition, thus making it applicable to diverse membrane proteins. The method is useful in Proteomics (i.e. simplification of 2D gels). Since membranes containing membrane proteins can be rapidly and efficiently separated from aqueous media, an initial mixture containing both membrane proteins and soluble proteins could be separated into two samples: one containing primarily membrane proteins and the other primarily soluble proteins. By applying each of the above samples on two distinct 2D gels, the number of spots per gel should decrease substantially thus improving gel resolution (i.e. simplifying gel analysis) and allowing elution of target spots and their characterization by MS with minimum of contaminants. The primary Application Areas include Biotech and Pharma sectors. |