ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Anion-exchange chromatography

Imagine you have a bunch of different colored marbles that you want to separate from each other. Anion-exchange chromatography is like a sorting process for these marbles.

First, you need a special container with tiny little holes in it that only certain marbles can fit through. This container is called a column.

Next, you fill the column with little beads that have a special charge. These beads are like magnets that attract certain marbles and repel others. In anion-exchange chromatography, the beads have a negative charge.

Now, you pour your mixture of different colored marbles into the top of the column. As the mixture travels down through the column, the marbles get stuck to the beads if they have a positive charge. The marbles with a negative charge pass through and continue down the column.

Once all the marbles have been separated, you can collect them at different stages of the column based on their color and charge.

So, anion-exchange chromatography is a way of separating molecules based on their charge. It uses a column filled with beads that have a negative charge to attract and separate positively charged molecules.