Size exclusion chromatography selection guide
To find the media or prepacked columns that suit your needs, choose the option below that best describes your application.
Size exclusion chromatography

I want to do preparative purification or analysis

I want to remove salt or change buffer only

The online selection tool will guide you to products that are suitable for your intended use. In some situations more than one product may be appropriate, and you will be asked to select from products with different fractionation ranges.

The fractionation range of a size exclusion chromatography (SEC) medium defines the range of molecular weights that can be separated. A general guideline is to select a medium where the protein of interest is near the middle of the fractionation range. However, when there is more than one suitable choice, consider which product would best meet your needs. For example, one of the products may have a broader fractionation range to enable better separation of the protein of interest from a specific contaminant. Or perhaps one of the options will allow a higher flow rate.

 

fractionation ranges

Cytiva offers four categories of size exclusion chromatography (SEC) media with resolution in the following order: Superdex > Superose >Sephacryl > Sephadex. A wide range of product options are available, including prepacked columns for chromatography systems, prepacked formats for manual purification, and loose media (resins).

Sephadex is used for group separations, such as desalting and buffer exchange. Sephadex LH-20 medium can be used with organic solvents and is used for example in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The other media are used for high-resolution fractionation to check protein purity or to further purify a partially purified or almost pure protein.

Superose prep grade media have a very wide fractionation range while Sephacryl and Superdex prep grade media is well-suited for fast, high recovery separations at laboratory and industrial scale, with Superdex giving the highest resolution.

Superdex Increase and Superose Increase are the next new generation of agarose-based SEC media for small-scale preparative purification and analysis (sample volumes up to 500 µl), offering improved performance in terms of higher resolution and shorter runtimes due to smaller and more rigid beads. They will eventually replace their Superdex and Superose predecessors.