FAQ: What are the advantages of magnetic affinity matrices?

Magnetic particles are ideally suited for applications involving high-throughput proteomic screening, small-scale protein isolation, immunomagnetic isolations or cell separation experiments. With magnetic beads, affinitly purification of tagged proteins, antigens, antibodies and nucleic acids can be done conveniently and quickly, with minimal time necessary for separation of the solid-phase from solution. In addition, immobilized substrates remain biologically active and can be eluted in small volumes or serve as ligands in subsequent pull-down or target interaction experiments involving DNA or proteins.

There are several additional advantages to this method. No centrifugation is required. The matrix can be regenerated without loss of binding capacity. There is also minimal sample loss during pipetting because magnetic beads concentrate at the side of the tube instead of the bottom.