Reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography of virus proteins and other hydrophobic proteins

Summary

So far most solvents generally used in reverse phase chromatography (RPC) for separation of peptides and water soluble polypeptides could not be utilized for hydrophobic proteins such as membrane proteins and structural polypeptides of viruses due to their insufficient solubility. But we have introduced a new RP-HPLC solvent system which was very useful in our studies on poliovirus polypeptides. Formic acid in high concentration is an extremely potent solvent for proteins, particularly those that are hydrophobic. Preliminary estimates are made of the concentration of formic acid which is required to completely dissolve hydrophobic proteins. For example, solubilization of structural polypeptides of poliovirus which are absolutely water insoluble requires 60% formic acid. Therefore, we used a proportion of 60% formic acid in all solvents for reversed phase chromatography and applied propanol-2 or acetonitrile as the organic modifiers for gradient elution. Using this mobile phase all four poliovirus polypeptides of three serological types were obtained in high purity by this rapid procedure. In each case, polypeptides were quantitatively eluted independent of the amount of protein (1–1000 µg) injected onto the columns. The solvents used were volatile and easily removed in a short evaporation step. Therefore this solvent system is suited for analytical and for micropreparative separation of proteins for chemical, biochemical and immunological studies. Rechromatography and electrophoresis in SDS-polyacrylamide gels of the separated polypeptides demonstrated that this solvent system with its high proportion of formic acid did not alter their primary structure. There may have been major changes in secondary and tertiary structure. In contrast, alterations of the elution characteristics were observed after reduction of disulfide bridges and several modifications of proteins.