Separation of Collagen by Magneto-Archimedes Levitation

The separation of biological materials by the magneto-Archimedes levitation technique is discussed in the present paper. Magneto-Archimedes levitation is a useful technique to levitate feeble magnetic materials by superconducting magnets of the 10 T class. Since the stable levitation position of matter is decided by the volume magnetic susceptibilities and densities of the object and the surrounding media, by utilizing the magneto-Archimedes levitation technique, a mixture of several materials can be spatially separated into each component. In a biological system, there are many materials with quite similar compositions or conformations. Even though the differences in their compositions or conformations are trivial, they may result in differences in their magnetic properties. Using magneto-Archimedes levitation, it seems possible to realize the fine separation of biological materials that have quite similar structures. The possibility of this novel fine separation technique for biological materials was evaluated using collagens as an example of a system with similar structures.