Molecular biology and immunology for clinicians 19: Protein purification and synthesis technology

Everywhere one looks in the practice of medicine there is the need to understand things at the level of specific proteins: vaccine design using a single protein would be much safer and efficient than the whole organism; diagnostic tests would be less prone to false-positive results if a single protein could be used; and on and on. The DNA revolution allowed us to manipulate the specific genes making proteins of interest, leading to the ability to make single proteins, called recombinant proteins, in inexhaustible supply. And now we can make chimeric proteins, like the mythical animal, with the head of one protein, the tail of another, and perhaps the body of a third--as many components as you like, the sky is the limit.