A simple, fast, one-step method for the purification of the skeletal-muscle ryanodine receptor

In this paper we describe a simple, fast, one-step method for the purification of the skeletal-muscle ryanodine receptor. The ryanodine receptor from CHAPS-solubilized junctional sarcoplasmic-reticulum membranes was adsorbed to a spermine-agarose column and eluted by 2 mM-spermine. The purified receptor, consisting predominantly of a 450 kDa polypeptide on SDS/PAGE, binds [3H]ryanodine with a specific activity of approximately 300 pmol/mg of protein and with a high affinity (KD = 4.7 +/- 2 nM). The purified receptor appears to retain the pharmacological properties of the receptor in the original membranes. The purification resulted in over 80% recovery of the initial ryanodine-binding sites and about 30-96-fold purification. This simple and fast method is highly reproducible and suitable for purification of small as well as large quantities of ryanodine receptor.