Head of laboratory: Prof. Dr. Andreas Scheibe , Prof. Dr. Winfried Linxweiler

Assistants: Bülent Turan , Kirstin Röger

Chromatography is an important step in biotechnical preparation processes to isolate proteins from cell cultures. Alonside their usual laboratory practicals, students carry out advanced chromatography techniques independently.  

Students also learn the practical applications and procedures of ultrafiltration and liquid-liquid extraction which represent the state-of-the-art in separation techniques used to harvest fermentation products.   

Carrying out and monitoring a biotechnological process: beer brewing is used to demonstrate different preparation techniques and to analyse different intermediate products.

Compulsory experiments in the  Sample Preparation Techniques practical:

• Purification of Lactoperoxidase from untreated milk with the help of ion- exchange chromatography. The purification of lactoperoxidase is documented by students to gain an overview of purification schemes.

• Purification of GFP. After precipating out ammonium sulphate from E. coli raw extract with recombinant GFP, students carry out a chromatographic separation by means of hydrophobic interaction chromatography (HIC). Here, the semiautomatic chromatography system ÄKTAprime is used.

Elective experiments in the Advanced Sample Preparation Techniques practical

• carrying out a two-stage extraction using an extraction centrifuge in order to determine the partition coefficient.

• Concentration of a yeast suspension with the help of an ultrafiltration apparatus. The evaluation includes the calculation and presentation of  changes in concentration of the yeast suspension in conjunction with the reduction over time of the permeate flow.

• Carrying out a replicable, high quality brewing process. Application of various biotechnological procedural steps such as extraction, dosing and filtration. Special quality controls by means of analysis of sugar, protein and amino acids as well as measurements of amylase and protease activity.

• Biochromatography Apparatus from GE Healthcare
• ÄKTAprime plus from GE Healthcare
• ÄKTApurifier from GE Healthcare
• Ultrafiltration Apparatus Sartorius Sartoflow Slice 200 Benchtop from Sartorius
• Liquid-liquid Separator V2 from Cinc
• Brewing equipment from Speidel