Sedimentation Velocity Analytical Ultracentrifugation
Discrete Species and Size-Distributions of Macromolecules and Particles

A follow-up to the experimental and instrumental aspects described in Basic Principles of Analytical Ultracentrifugation, the volume Sedimentation Velocity Analytical Ultracentrifugation: Discrete Species and Size-Distributions of Macromolecules and Particles describes the theory and practice of data analysis. Mathematical models for the sedimentation process and the evolution of detected signals are developed in a comprehensive framework, jointly with the description of current and historical strategies for how to extract from noisy experimental data the physical parameters of interest, such as size, mass, and shape, composition, and polydispersity of sedimenting particles.

The methods are extensively illustrated, and supported with practical applications, as well as cross-references where to find the methods in the public domain software SEDFIT and SEDPHAT. The systems covered are discrete or polydisperse mixtures of sedimenting molecules or particles in dilute solution, such as proteins and other biomolecules and their stable complexes, man-made polymers, and nanoparticles, observed in different optical systems. A useful reference for researchers and graduate students of macromolecular disciplines, these methods form the essential foundation for the analysis of dynamic interacting systems, which are covered in the volume Sedimentation Velocity Analytical Ultracentrifugation: Interacting Systems.

Software referenced in the book is available for download at: https://sedfitsedphat.nibib.nih.gov/default.aspx

Basic Analysis Principles

Sedimentation of Discrete Non-Interacting Particles

Properties of Sedimentation Coefficient Distributions

Distributions Of Non-Diffusing Particles

Distributions of Diffusing Particles

Sedimentation Coefficient Distributions from Boundary Derivatives and Extrapolations

Multi-Component Distributions

Practical Analysis of Non-Interacting Systems

Appendix A: Numerical Solutions of the Lamm Equation

Appendix B: Calculating Distributions

Dr. Schuck obtained his Ph.D. from the Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where he worked on interactions of integral proteins of the erythrocyte membrane using analytical ultracentrifugation. He received his post-doctoral research training in physical biochemistry with Dr. Allen Minton at NIDDK, and joined the Bioengineering and Physical Science Program of NCRR as a Research Fellow in 1997. He is currently a Earl Stadtman Tenure-Track Investigator and Chief of the Dynamics of Macromoleular Assembly Section, Laboratory of Cellular Imaging and Macromolecular Biophysics at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Institutes of Health.