A simple, reliable procedure for practically quantitative (90-98%) and fast (< 30 min) elution of proteins from SDS-PA gels is described with reproducible recoveries in the range from 100 to 1 pmol per band, which does not require the inclusion of detergents in the elution buffer. It consists in the combination of (1) highly sensitive on-gel protein detection (50 mol per band) with imidazole-SDS-zinc (reverse staining), (2) crushing of the protein band to produce 32-micron gel particles, and (3) vortexing of the slurry in a solution of a zinc-complexing agent, e.g. glycine 0.5 M or EDTA 100 mM (100 microliters for a 100-pmol BSA band), at room temperature. Eluted proteins can be directly analyzed by RP-HPLC, quantitatively loaded onto a PVDF membrane, or, provided that they are previously renatured on-gel, analyzed by biological activity tests. The application of the procedure to in-solution enrichment of scarce proteins for N-terminal analysis is shown.