It can seem a formidable task, faced with a liter of fermentation broth—a dark, viscous sludge-knowing that in there is one group of molecules that has to be separated from all the rest. Those molecules possibly represent only about 0.0001%, or 1 ppm of the total biomass and are dispersed throughout the organism, possibly intimately bound up with other molecules. Like the proverbial needle in a haystack, you have to remove lot of hay to be left with just the needle, without knowing what the needle looks like or where in the haystack it is.