Lafora disease(LD) is an autosomal recessive, fatal progressive myoclonus epilepsy caused by the abnormal bulldup of insoluble glycogen, called Lafora bodies. Mutations in the gene encoding the protein laforin lead to LD. Laforin is a dual-specificity phosphatase with a carbohydrate-bindlng module. This enzyme is necessary for proper glycogen metabolism, but its role din the development of LD not yet fully understood. In this study, we established a purification scheme to purify recombinant laforin and analyzed laforin to determine whether the monomer or dimer species is more physiologically relevant. Our ultimate goal is t crystallize laforin to determine its three-dimensional structure and use these insights to understand the enzyme. Human laforin is difficult to purify due to its tendency to be sequestered into inclusion bodies when expressed in E. coli. Therefore, we cloned the gene for laforin from the Gallus gallus(red rooster) genome into a bacterial expression vector and purified laforin from E. coli using a two-step purification procedure. We subjected monomeric Gallus aforin gel electrophoresis, mass spectrometry, dynamic light scattering, phosphatase and starch-binding assays. We conclude that laforin is present mainly as a monomer, remains monomeric, and has phosphatase and carbohydrate-binding activity comparable to human la Therefore, Gallus gallus laforin is an appropriate model for human laforin, and any insights we gain from it can be directly applied to human la forin. With this information we can move forward in understanding the role of laforin in the body and eventually develop treatment options for LD