Monitoring the centrifugal recovery of recombinant protein inclusion bodies

The industrial processing of proteins expressed as insoluble inclusion bodies employs a reasonably standard sequence of unit operations. One of these is centrifugation, which serves to concentrate the inclusion bodies after disruption of the host microorganism, and also separates the inclusion bodies from other cellular debris. Monitoring the performance of the centrifuge is essential if excessive product and hence financial loss is to be avoided and a reasonable separation obtained. The analytical disc centrifuge may be used to monitor the centrifugation. This instrument returns the sample size distribution with high resolution and without fouling. By obtaining size distributions of the centrifuge feed, supernatant and concentrate, the fractional collection efficiency of the centrifuge may be determined as a function of the Stokes diameter, and a mass balance constructed.