Isolation of renal proximal tubular brush-border membranes.

This protocol describes a method for the isolation and purification of renal proximal tubular brush-border membranes in high yield and high purity. Based on a different reactivity of the brush-border membrane compared to other cellular membranes with divalent cations, such as Mg2+, purified membrane vesicles can be obtained after a few differential centrifugation steps (within approximately 3 h) that are suitable for in vitro studies, such as transport experiments or protein and lipid analysis.