Use of Proteins Blotted to Polyvinylidene Difluoride Membranes as Immunogens

The great analytical power of sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) makes it one of the most effective tools of protein chemistry and molecular biology. In the past, there have been many attempts to convert the technique from analytical to preparative scale, because by SDS-PAGE, one can resolve more than 100 protein species in 5–6 h. The number of papers that describe preparative elution from polyacrylamide gels is immense (for example, see refs. 1 –5 ). In spite of the numerous variations in the procedure of elution, none of the available methods is entirely satisfactory. Some of the methods are very laborious, and others lead to loss of resolution or poor recovery.