Table 3. Common proteases used for fusion tag removal.

Protease	Advantages	Disadvantages
TEV	Stringent cleavage-sequence specificity and few residual amino acids after cleave. Easily produced in house. Good activity in a range of buffers and at 4°C.	Activity limited by some commonly used detergents. Reducing agents required for activity. Comparatively low activity.
HRV 3C	Stringent cleavage-sequence specificity and few residual amino acids after cleave. Easily produced in house. Good activity in a range of buffers and at 4°C.	Activity limited by some commonly used detergents. Comparatively low activity.
Thrombin	Not affected by the majority of detergents.	Non-specific cleavage, Inhibited by reducing agents and common protease inhibitors used during purification.
SUMO protease	No recombinant linker region needs to be constructed, native N-terminus of the target protein is maintained.	Little activity in many commonly used detergents.
Factor Xa	Not affected by the majority of detergents.	Non-specific cleavage, Inhibited by reducing and chelating agents, phosphate ions.