So now that we're pretty much experts on protein structure, in this chapter, we're going to focus on protein techniques that biochemists use to study proteins. And we'll start with protein purification techniques. So protein purification is just the process of isolating a single protein of interest so that it's the only batch of protein molecule in solution. And there are actually several techniques that can be used to purify a protein for protein purification. These protein purification techniques exploit unique differences in protein properties. Some of these protein properties include the sizes of the proteins, the charges that these proteins have, their polarities, their binding affinities, and more.
In our example below of protein purification, notice on the left over here, what we have are a bunch of different proteins. We've got green proteins, we've got orange ones, blue ones, and black ones. Also notice that we have multiple of the same type of protein. So essentially, we just have a big protein mixture here on the left. Through the process of protein purification, we're able to isolate a single protein of interest so that it's the only batch of protein molecule in solution. Notice that our protein of interest is this green protein right here. Through protein purification, we're able to essentially isolate all these proteins of interest, so that they're the only batch of protein molecules in solution. Over here, what we have is the purified protein.
In our next lesson video, we're going to talk about a typical protein purification strategy. But before we get there, let's get a little bit of practice with this concept of protein purification. So I'll see you guys in that video.
