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

Abstract 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.