Subject: Re: Chlorophyll extraction

From: [email-masked] (Dr J. West)
Date: 21 Jul 1996 13:17:37 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Bryan Guest <[email-masked]> wrote:
>Does anyone have a method for extracting chlorophyll from chloroplasts?

Basically, grind green leaves in near-pure ethanol. Chlorophyll is
alcohol-soluble. Do you need pure chlorophyll, free from other
alcohol-soluble compounds? If so, further stages will be necessary.

Do it in a pestle & mortar, using chemically clean sand as a
triturating aid.

It is a standard school/first year university lab. practical, and
should be described in any 1st yr undergrad botany/plant biochemistry
text book, or even in a good school biology textbook.

[Written on behalf of Janet West, who is not able to reply directly.
If you were asking about how to isolate living chloroplasts, still
able to photo-phosphorylate _in vitro_, that is a more specialised and
complicated matter. Janet West used to be an expert at it.]
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Martin H Evans    e-mail: [email-masked]       .Sun  96-07-21
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