Virus purification by CsCl density gradient using non-ultracentrifugation

Virus purification by cesium chloride (CsCl) density gradient, which generally requires an expensive ultracentrifuge, is an essential technique in virology. Here, we optimized virus purification by CsCl density gradient using general centrifugation (40,000 × g, 2 h, 4 °C), which showed almost the same purification ability as conventional CsCl density gradient ultracentrifugation (100,000 × g, 1 h, 4 °C) using phages S13′ and φEF24C. Moreover, adenovirus strain JM1/1 was also successfully purified by this method. We suggest that general centrifugation can become a less costly alternative to ultracentrifugation for virus purification by CsCl densiy gradient and will thus encourage research in virology. Ed Rybicki’s insight:This is actually quite a big deal – and strange that it should have taken so long for someone to figure out, when density gradient centrifugation in CsCl has been known for 60-odd years, that one can do it in a high-speed as opposed to an ultracentrifuge! I’ll bet you the same thing will work with Optiprep/iodixanol, too.See it on Scoop.it, via Viruses and Bioinformatics from Virology.uvic.ca
Virus purification by CsCl density gradient using non-ultracentrifugation
Source: Viral Bioinformatics