The Protein Man's Blog | A Discussion of Protein Research

Most people learn more by doing things rather than by just reading, watching or hearing about it. As such, providing hands-on learning can have a profound effect on learning in schools, particularly on science teaching.

While proteolytic enzymes such as proteases and phosphatases play an important role in living cells and help ensure the survival of the organism, the mechanisms that regulate the tightly controlled cellular environment is disrupted during cell lysis. When this happens, these enzymes may start cleaving a variety of proteins that they would otherwise not touch in intact cells. This situation often leads to reduced recovery of total protein and biologically meaningless representation of protein activities.

Proteases are enzymes that facilitate proteolysis, or the breakdown of protein and peptide molecules into smaller polypeptides and/or amino acids. These enzymes do their job by cleaving the peptide bonds linking the amino acids together in the polypeptide chains.

Dialysis is a solution-based separation technique used to facilitate the removal of small, unwanted compounds from macromolecules such as proteins, DNA, or polysaccharides through a semi-permeable membrane using the principle of selective diffusion. Although there are a lot of factors that affect the dialysis rate, the semi-permeable membrane is the single most important factor that can determine the success of the process.