ANALYSIS OF DNA BY CAPILLARY ELECTROPHORE SIS

Recent advances in the,separation of oligo DNA fragments using capilla ry electrophoresis (CE) were reviewed with special emphasis on the his torical aspects and possible applications of the technology in the nea r future. In the section on single strand DNA separation, the high res olution capability of CE was demonstrated by referring to the size sep aration of oligo DNA in which a 1mer difference in size of several hun dreds base-mer can be recognized by using a polyacrylamide gel-filled capillary or high viscosity buffer. In addition, a statistical analysi s of the migration time of heterogeneous oligo DNA was shown. By emplo ying Gauss's least square method, the estimated migration time of any known sequences having no secondary struture can be calculated with pr obable error of less than 0.08 min. The effect of the secondary struct ure on separation was shown. The possibility of using these secondary structure effects on migration time for doing SSCP (single strand conf ormation polymorphism) was indicated. The section on double strand DNA separation focussed mainly on the application of CE. The possibility of detecting a specific gene or points mutation, or doing genetic diag nosis and paternal analysis was shown by referring to example of CE ap plication to PCR (polymerase chain reaction) product analysis, ARMS (a mplification refractory mutation system) analysis, RFLP (restriction f ragment length polymorphism) analysis, and VNTR (variable number of ta ndem repeat) analysis.