Dr. Christian Anfinsen went through a lot of Genuine Whatman Filter Paper, No. 1 during his career. There are different grades of filter paper; No. 1 was labelled, “For ordinary work, retaining medium sized particles. Qualitative or rough quantitative.” It’s used in paper chromatography, a method that Anfinsen performed in many of his experiments, in which chemical substances are separated based on how far they migrate on the specially prepared piece of filter paper.

Learn more on the W. & R. Balston Ltd. Genuine Whatman Filter Paper page.

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Anfinsen was always trying the newest technology to advance his research. In 1963, Bruce Merrifield at Rockefeller Institute developed the technique of solid-phase protein synthesis. In this method, the peptide is bound to an insoluble support, usually a bead, and any unreacted reagents left at the end of any step in the process are removed by a simple washing. Anfinsen tried this technique, but abandoned it because it could not handle large proteins like Staphylococcal nuclease. He kept this equipment, though, in case it could be used in other experiments.

Read Anfinsen’s thorough history of his experiments, including a discussion of solid phase peptide synthesis, in “Principles that Govern the Folding of Protein Chains,” Science, 20 July 1973, Volume 181, Number 4096.

Learn more on the Solid Phase Peptide Synthesizer page.

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This capillary viscometer was created by NIH glassblowers especially for Dr. Waldo Fisher. Fisher had won a year in Dr. Christian Anfinsen’s laboratory (1971-72) through a U.S. Public Health Service Career Development Award. During that year, Fisher worked on the enzyme cytochrome c, using it as another example of Anfinsen’s Thermodynamic Hypothesis on the relation between a protein’s amino acid structure and its three-dimensional shape. Devices such as viscometers, which measure a liquid’s viscosity (thickness), were common in the 1960-70s, and were used in the physical characterization of proteins. This one was specially made to measure very small amounts of liquid.

Learn more on the NIH Glassblowers Capillary Viscometer artifact page.

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