Protein Precipitation and Concentration: Used as a crowding agent to selectively precipitate and concentrate proteins from complex mixtures.

Virus and Bacteriophage Concentration: Employed with NaCl to precipitate and concentrate viruses and bacteriophages (e.g., M13, lambda) from culture supernatants.

DNA/RNA Precipitation and Cleanup: Utilized with salts to precipitate nucleic acids for PCR product cleanup, plasmid purification, and library preparation workflows.

Protein Crystallization: Serves as a precipitant in crystallography screening to promote crystal formation of proteins and macromolecular complexes.

PEG-Mediated Yeast Transformation: Applied in lithium acetate/PEG protocols to enhance DNA uptake in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Protoplast Transformation of Bacteria: Used to facilitate DNA uptake in protoplasts of Gram-positive bacteria such as Bacillus subtilis and Streptomyces spp.

Cell Fusion (Hybridoma Generation): Employed to fuse myeloma and B cells for monoclonal antibody production and other somatic cell fusion applications.

Molecular Crowding in Enzymatic Reactions: Added to ligation, assembly, and other enzyme-based reactions to enhance efficiency via volume exclusion.

Aqueous Two-Phase Partitioning: Used to create PEG/dextran phase systems for biomolecule separation and enrichment.

Phage Display Workflows: Utilized for rapid precipitation and recovery of display phage during selection and amplification steps.