Biochem Lab PP

The study of proteins is important in fields like genetics, biochemical research, and medicine because the role they play in most if not all biological functions can be used to understand how diseases work, and more importantly how to treat them. The function of the protein comes from its structure, so an understanding of how the protein is built could shed some light on how it works. The goals of this lab were to successfully purify and crystallize the protein using methods such as chromatography, which is used to separate molecules by size; a Bradford Assay which determines the concentration of protein in collected solutions and subsequently the volume for the gel electrophoresis; an SDS-PAGE which confirms the presence of GFP protein in the solution; and finally handing drop vapor diffusion which ultimately crystallizes the protein. Throughout this lab, we feel as though we obtained an ample amount of 6xHis-GFP protein due to the bright green color of our eluate samples. Though we did not make a large GFP crystal, we successfully made scattered GFP crystals under 25% PEG 8000 precipitant concentration.