Biochemical techniques, including pH variation, outsalting, ultracentrifugation, gel filtration chromatography and electrophoresis, etc., have been employed together with instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) to study the rare earth elements (REE) bound proteins in the natural plant fern, Dicranopteris dichitoma. INAA was also used to identify whether the proteins were bound firmly with REE,The results obtained show that two REE bound proteins (REP-I and REP-II) have been separated. The molecular weight of REP-I on Sephadex G-200 gel column is about 8.10(5) Daltons and that of REP-II is less than 12,400 Daltons, respectively. However, SDS-PAGE of the two proteins shows that they mainly have two protein subunits with MW 14,100 and 38,700 Daltons. They are probably conjugated proteins, glycoproteins with different glyco-units.
