Proposal of a laboratory course dedicated to the generation of protein molecular weight standards for sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis.

Protein molecular weight standards are routinely employed in sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) to estimate the apparent sizes of unknown proteins within a sample. For training students, a laboratory course based on the production of marker proteins is proposed. Following fractionation by column chromatography, a series of purified proteins and mixtures of proteins were combined to generate various sets of unstained, prestained and fluorescently labeled molecular weight ladders for SDS-PAGE. The produced material can be used in successive laboratory practices as an alternative to commercial protein markers.