Ultrathin-layer gel electrophoresis of biopolymers

Emerging need for large-scale, high-resolution analysis of biopolymers, suc h as DNA sequencing polymerase chain reaction, (PCR) product sizing, single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) hunting and analysis of protein molecules ne cessitated the development of automated and high-throughput gel electrophor esis based methods enabling rapid, high-performance separations in a wide m olecular weight range. Scaling down electric field mediated separation proc esses supports higher throughput due to the applicability of higher voltage s, thus speeding up analysis time. Indeed, efforts in miniaturization resul ted in faster, easier, less costly and more convenient analyses, fulfilling the needs of the emerging biotechnology industry for microscale and massiv ely parallel assays. The two primary approaches in miniaturizing electropho resis dimensions are the capillary and microslab formats. This latter one e volved towards ultrathin-layer gel electrophoresis which is, except from th e thickness of the separation platform, slightly in the upper side of the s cale, resulting in considerably easier handling. Ultrathin-layer gel electr ophoresis combines the advantages of conventional slab-gel electrophoresis (multilane format) and capillary gel electrophoresis (rapid, high-efficienc y separations). It is readily automated, automatic versions of it have been extensively used for large-scale DNA sequencing in the Human Genome Projec t and more recently became popular in high throughput DNA fragment analysis . Ultrathin-layer techniques are the first step towards the wider use of el ectrophoresis microchips in perfecting a user-friendly interface between th e user and the microdevice.