New approaches for predicting protein retention time in hydrophobic interaction chromatography

Hydrophobic interaction chromatography (HIC) is an important technique for the purification of proteins. In this paper, we review three different approaches for predicting protein retention time in HIC, based either on a protein's structure or on its amino-acidic composition, and we have extended one of these approaches. The first approach correlates the protein retention time in HIC with the protein average surface hydrophobicity. This methodology is based on the protein three-dimensional structure data and considers the hydrophobic contribution of the exposed amino acid residues as a weighted average. The second approach, which we have extended, is based on the high correlation level between the average surface hydrophobicity of a protein's hydrophobic interacting zone and its retention time in HIC. Finally, a third approach carries out a prediction of the average surface hydrophobicity of a protein, using only its amino-acidic composition, without knowing its three-dimensional structure. These models would make it possible to test different operating conditions for the purification of a target protein by computer simulations, and thus make it easier to select the optimal conditions, contributing to the rational design and optimization of the process.