Biochemistry Laboratory

Head of laboratory: Winfried Linxweiler
Assistants: Bülent Turan , Kirstin Röger

In the Biochemistry laboratory, students on the Bachelor's degree program Biotechnology learn practical procedures for dealing with the molecules and  biopolymers that play such an important role in living systems. The practicals are divided into 10 individual lab days and 2 group lab days. On the first group lab day, the topics are  pipetting, preparing a puffer and photometrics; the individual experimental days: 1. sugar 2. lipids 3. nucleic acids 4. amino acids 5. proteins 6. enzymes 7. enzyme kinetics 8. chromatography I 9. chromatography II 10. immune chemistry; the last group lab day: enzyme screening.
Every lab day consists of several individual, analytic, preparatory and quantitative  experiments which are carried out by students independently and are evaluated in a results protocol. Each student works in groups of 2 (see fig. 1, below) with a lab day according to a timetable which changes weekly. Supervision is carried out by the Head of laboratory and assistant in the newly built Biochemistry laboratory.
Analytic methods such as SDS-PAGE, thin layer chromatography (see fig. 2, below), agarosis-gel electrophoresis, Elisa and turbidimetry, enzymatic analysis, determining all the proteins in a sample following Bradford, Biuret and BCA methods are all carried out by students. The lab days also include preparatory methods such as the extraction of biomolecules from brain and liver samples, alcoholic DNA precipitation (see fig. 3, below), dialysis and chromatography of proteins and isolation of antibodies.