THE EFFECT OF ELECTRIC-FIELDS ON THE DISPERSION OF OLIGONUCLEOTIDES USING A MULTIPOINT DETECTION METHOD IN CAPILLARY GEL-ELECTROPHORESIS

A multi-point detection method is proposed to study the dispersion of oligonucleotides in polyacrylamide gel capillary. In this method a sin gle gel filled capillary is curved into loops, with several detection points aligned with a common detector. In this manner, several electro pherograms can be obtained at different migration times during one cap illary electrophoresis (CE) run, thus permitting studies of changes in the spatial peak variance sigma(2) as a function of time. Investigati ons of polydeoxyadenylic acids in the range of 40-60 bases indicate th at the diffusion coefficient of these compounds increases at higher vo ltages in the polyacrylamide gel-filled capillaries. Using this simple multi-point detection method one can estimate the band broadening ori ginating from sample injection (sigma(inj)(2)), which is otherwise dif ficult to measure.