• Question: What does chromatography show? Do you use it in your research?

    Asked by meg123 to Amy, Karen, Sarah, Vijay, Will on 19 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Sarah Martin

      Sarah Martin answered on 19 Jun 2012:

      Hi meg,

      I do! I use liquid chromatography, and I use it a lot to separate out all the different proteins found in a cell so I can look at each one individually and not have them all get confused together.

      Chromatography is generally used to separate out things from a mixture.

      Have you used it?

      🙂
      Sarah

    • Photo: Will Reynolds

      Will Reynolds answered on 19 Jun 2012:

      Hi again meg. As I said in your TNT question, my answer to this one is YES! I use lots of different types of chromatography. As Sarah says it is a way of seperating things out and I use it to sperate out all of the different molecules that I make in my reactions. Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) is a thin sheet of aluminium covered in a layer of silica (really clean, small sand particles) over which an organic solvent is run to seperate things out. Liquid chromatography (HPLC), like Sarah uses, is made up of a glass tube which is filled with silica or other powdered solids and a liquid is pumped through it with the thing you want to seperate dissolved in it. Gas chromatography (GC) is similar to liquid but uses gases instead of liquid.

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