CAPILLARY ELECTROPHORESIS OF PROTEINS AND NUCLEIC-ACIDS

During the past 30 years, slab gel electrophoresis has been one of the most important tools available to modern biochemistry, biology, and c linical research. However, despite substantial progress in methodology , slab gel techniques typically suffer from laborious, time-consuming and difficult-to-automate procedures. Capillary electrophoresis (CE), first introduced a decade ago, emerges now as an alternative to slab g el techniques with all the advantages of modern automated technology. Although the first target of CE was analysis of small molecules (it is a highly efficient alternative to HPLC), now a main focus is on biopo lymers. Currently, CE can be viewed as a fully automated tool for rapi d, highly sensitive, and quantitative analysis of minute (nanoliter) a mounts of complex samples. This chapter reviews the most important CE techniques and their use for the analysis and characterization of prot eins and DNA.