Aim To optimize purification conditions of recombinant hirudin 3 in thefermentation broth and characterize the product. Methods Reambinant hirudin 3 was isolated andpurified from the fermentation broth by three column chromatography steps with macroporous resin,DEAE cellulose DES2 and preparative RP-HPLC, respectively, and the optimal conditions were obtained.Purity of the product was determined by SDS-PAGE and analytical RP-HPLC. The molecular weight wasdetermined by mass spec-trometry. The structure of the product was analyzed by peptide map.ResultsThe product with purity of 95.4786% was obtained after three purification steps in the optimumconditions with a total yield of 39%. The molecular weight of the product was 6 913.32 ± 6.55 Da,coincident to the theoretical molecular weight of r-hirudin 3. The structure of the product wascoincident to r-hirudin 3 either. Conclusion The optimized purification steps can be successfullyemployed for purification of r-hirudin 3 from E. coli using batch-type approaches. The productobtained with high purity was confirmed to be r-hirudin 3.
