Immobilization of proteins on oxidized crosslinked Sepharose preparations by reductive amination

Mild periodate oxidation of certain commercially available crosslinked agarose beads (Sepharose CL-4B and CL-6B) results in the generation of aldehydo groups which were useful for immobilization of amino compounds by reductive amination using pyridine borane. Consumption of periodate ion and production of formaldehyde were only observed with crosslinked Sepharose preparations and were correlated with a binding capacity much greater than that of uncross-linked gels when subjected to the reductive amination reaction. Up to 50 mg (approximately 0.73 mumol) of bovine serum albumin and 30 mumol of glycylglycine were coupled per gram of moist oxidized Sepharose CL-6B. The immobilization reaction was shown to proceed at neutral pH requiring about 12 h for completion and to be relatively insensitive to temperature and pyridine borane concentration. The oxidized gel was shown to be stable for at least 2 months upon storage in 0.1 M acetic acid. This method has proven to be useful for the preparation of a variety of affinity matrices and immobilized enzymes.