Applications:

From the discussion in the preceding section, it is clear that the technique of size exclusion chromatography has some unique advantages. Some of these features strongly favour its use for biochemical work. Therefore, it finds extensive use for separations in the said field. An application is numerous and all of them cannot be cited here. Typical examples from this extremely large field are enzyme purification, purification and characterization of antibodies and separation and purification of peptide and protein hormones.

The present section will only highlight some representative applications. It may not be possible to give details of the procedures because of the constraints of space needed for it. For the purposes of clarity and conciseness in the presentation, the applications are subdivided in the following three heads.

1. Analytical applications

2. Preparative applications

3. Miscellaneous applications

The miscellaneous applications include important applications which are not covered in the first two heads particularly the use of gels in thin layer chromatography, zone electrophoresis and HPLC. No doubt, these are not the straight applications of size exclusion chromatography but they definitely reflect on the use of gels for separations.