Rapid separation of bovine caseins by mass ion exchange chromatography

Abstract

Summary: The rapid isolation of major bovine caseins in gram quantities was investigated. Whole casein was precipitated from individual cow's milk by adjusting the pH to 4·6 and the precipitated casein was suspended in 4·5 M urea (pH 8·0) containing 0·02 M imidazole and 0·03 M β-mercaptoethanol, and bound on a QAE Zeta Prep 250 cartridge. Stepwise elution with the urea/imidazole β-mercaptoethanol buffer and varying amounts of NaCl gave five well resolved peaks, which were identified by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and fast protein liquid chromatography to be pure γ-casein, κ-casein. β-casein, β-casein and α_s-casein, respectively. The ion exchange cartridge was regenerated by flushing with buffer containing 0·50 Μ-NaCl followed by equilibration with starting buffer before separation of next sample. The time required to run each sample including cartridge regeneration and equilibration was 4 hours.