ThePorkWhisperer
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Isolation of amino acids from milk/protein shake?
Hi there! 
I'm happy to have found this board, seems like just the place to ask.
Anyhow,
I was wondering if it was possible to isolate specific amino acids from a protein shake or even from milk, just for the fun of it.
Being very new to chemistry, I want to experiment with isolating and identifying things (distillation, acid/base extraction, chromatography,
crystallization, melting point, spectrophotometry, etc.) and have no equipment nor prior experience except for books. My goal is to synthesize
proteins and I probably can't to buy from SigmaAldrich.
Can anyone please suggest a procedure to do this and maybe even point me towards how to synthesize peptides?
Please keep in mind I can only afford up to 1000$ of equipment because that's all I've saved outside of tuition fees and living costs.
Thank you
P.S.: nickname irrelevant, I just thought it sounded funnier than Maggie 
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smaerd
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For small scale purifications of amino acids you'll need to look into many things. Hydrolysis reactions being one. Acid/Base extractions. Then maybe
size exclusion chromatography and gel or capillary electrophoresis.
Peptide synthesis is a vast field. No one can really give a procedure for how to synthesize any peptide each one is different and will require
different techniques. Going to have to brush up on organic chemistry and do some research into peptide synthesis.
Being a little more specific can go a long way. What is inside of protein shakes/milk specifically that you are interested in?
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confused
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this might be a useful starting point
http://courses.chem.psu.edu/chem36/Web%20Syn06/Exp112Syn06.p...
and you could take a look at polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, its commonly used in biotechnology to isolate diffrent proteins based on their
molecular mass and electrical charge.
although i think this is a more relevent post for the Biochemistry section
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bbartlog
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For the isolation of casein from milk, have a look at https://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/tryptophan....
There are other processes described which are probably less interesting; in particular I wouldn't try to do the tryptophan isolation they describe,
because it's only 1% of the amino acid in the casein. Even if you could reproduce their yields you would need to start with 25 liters of milk to get
4g of pure tryptophan.
But as a source of proline or glutamic acid, the casein might be more promising.
The less you bet, the more you lose when you win.
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Nicodem
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Thread Moved
23-8-2013 at 09:03 |
Random
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cottage cheese contain 65g protein per 500g if you want to use casein
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sargent1015
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Can you get access to MBHA rink amide resin? 
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DraconicAcid
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One could probably hydrolyze hair (keratin) with sodium hydroxide to get a mix of amino acids (or their bases, at least). I couldn't tell you how to
isolate one from the other, though, apart from various chromatographic methods.
Please remember: "Filtrate" is not a verb.
Write up your lab reports the way your instructor wants them, not the way your ex-instructor wants them.
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sonogashira
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Separation of amino acids is most easily performed with paper chromatography. Whatman sells chromatography paper on Amazon, and it will cost less than
$1000! Procedures for separationg amino acids are well researched, and should be easy for you to do at home, with little cost. If you search on
archive.org there is probably a book on it. Amino acids are one of the cases where paper chromatography gives better results than thin layer
chromatography, so it would be a good thing to try if you have not done chromatography before.
[Edited on 26-8-2013 by sonogashira]
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