Recent advances in affinity capillary electrophoresis

Use of the specificity of (bio)interactions can effectively overcome the se lectivity limitation faced in capillary electrophoresis (CE), and the resul ting technique usually is referred to as affinity capillary electrophoresis (ACE). Despite the high selectivity of ACE, several important problems sti ll need to be addressed. A major issue in all CE separations, including ACE , is the concentration detection limit. Using UV detection, this is usually in the order of 10(-6) M whereas laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) detectio n can provide detection limits down to the sub-10(-10) M range. However, a marked disadvantage of LIF is that labeling of the analytes is usually requ ired, which might change the interaction behavior of the solutes under inve stigation. Additionally, labeling reactions at sub-10(-10) M concentration levels are certainly not trivial and often difficult to perform quantitativ ely. Alternative and universal detection approaches, particularly mass spec trometric (MS) detection, look very promising but (A) CE-MS techniques are still far from routine application. important future progress in sensitive detection strategies is likely to increase the use of AGE in the future.