Investigating a protein in a patient’s solid sample is difficult if we have only one part of the tissue. In order to obtain the protein of interest (p53), we need to cut the tissue into small pieces, grind it, smash it in order to destroy the cell to let the protein released from there or if the tissue has a lot of connective parts like collagen we need to degrade it by collagenase treatment.
Isolation cells and proteins from a tissue
Tissues have connective parts like collagen and ECM components. In the case of adipose tissue from a patient, we have a lot of collagen. The first step is to get rid of the connective tissue. This process is usually done by the digestion of these connective parts by COLLAGENASE enzymes. We are adding to the freshly isolated sample a collagenase cocktail and leave it for a while with regular shaking. After the digestion process is successfully done we got an orange juice like solution, which is the sign that the collagen has been broken down by the collagenase treatment (Figure 1).
(A) Freshly