Chromatography

Chromatography is a very powerful method that can be used for the purification and separation of molecules in the laboratory. For example, without chromatography, and the work of a Banting, Best and a biochemist called Collip (who perfected the purification), we would have no treatment for type I diabetes, that is, insulin would not have been discovered. Without chromatography we wouldn’t be able to sequence DNA, perform PCR, and many drugs and biological mechanisms would not have been discovered.

Examples of common chromatography methods include: ion exchange chromatography, size exclusion chromatography, affinity binding chromatography and hydrophobic interaction chromatography.

Other examples of chromatography are: two-dimensional chromatography, thin layer chromatography (TLC), paper chromatography.