Cibacron Blue 3GA was immobilized on Sepharose CL-6B to obtain a highly substituted dye-ligand adsorbent which dye concentration was 17.4 lmol dye per gram wet gel. This adsorbent had a highly binding capacity for bovine serum albumin (BSA). The effects of ionic strength on the adsorption and desorption of BSA to the adsorbent were studied. Adsorption isotherms were expressed by the Langmuir model. The quantitative relationships between the model parameters and the ionic strength were obtained. The desorptions were performed by adding salt to the BSA solutions in which adsorption equilibria had been reached. Adding salt to the solution resulted in the desorption of the bound protein. It was found that the isotherm obtained from the desorption experiments agreed well to the isotherm obtained from the adsorption experiments at the same ionic strength. The result demonstrated that the adsorption of BSA to the highly substituted adsorbent was reversible.List of symbols C mg cm A3 liquid phase concentration of BSA at equilibrium C 0 mg cm A3 the concentration of the initial protein solution C 1 mg cm A3 liquid phase concentration of BSA at ®rst equilibrium C 2 mg cm A3 liquid phase concentration of BSA after desorption C s mol dm A3 the salt concentration K d mg cm A3 dissociation constant in Langmuir model q mg g A1 adsorbed density of BSA at equilibrium q 1 mg g A1 adsorbed BSA density at ®rst equilibrium q 2 mg g A1 adsorbed BSA density after desorption q m mg g A1 Langmuir parameter, adsorption capacity for BSA V 0 cm A3 volume of the initial protein solution V 1 cm A3 withdrawn volume of protein solution for earlier adsorption determination V 2 cm A3 added volume of the buffer solution for desorption W g wet weight of the adsorbent 1 Introduction Dye-ligand adsorbents for protein puri®cations have been developed extensively because they offer the chance of simple and rapid isolations of proteins, typically 20 to 80 fold puri®cation with about 80% recovery from a crude extract without prior treatment [1]. There are now examples of at least 30 different dyes for the puri®cation of a great variety of proteins ranging through recombinant polypeptide hormones, blood proteins, and most classes of enzymes [2]. Dyes have often replaced nucleotides as af®nity ligand in large-scale puri®cation of biomolecules [3]. There are several examples of large-scale puri®cation of proteins using dye ligand af®nity chromatography, such as glycerokinase, ATP: AMP phospho-transferase [4,5]. More recent alternative exploitations of dye-protein interactions such as af®nity cross-¯ow ®ltration, af®nity precipitation and af®nity extraction also play an important role in such isolations [6±9]. Among all of the dyes, the mostly utilized one is a reactive dye, Cibacron Blue F3GA (Fig. 1), which is a mixture of two isomers [3, 10, 11]. There are many factors affecting the interactions between a protein and an immobilized dye, such as immobilized dye density, ionic strength, temperature, pH and buffer composition [1,8,9,12]. It was found that th...