Question

What is the purpose of elution after washing the column in protien purification?

Answer 1

Elution is the process of extracting one material from another by washing with a solvent to remove adsorbed material from an adsorbent.

So in columns after carrying any biological processes, we carry out elution to remove any adsobed ions present on the wall surfaces of column inorder to avoid unnecessary formation of byproducts in next operation. We term this as purification.

In simple words elution is carried out to remove unreacted starting material or isolate one desired product from a range of by-products after a reaction has been performed.