Fast DNA Fragment Sizing in a Short Capillary Column

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is an efficient and fast microseparation technique that is well suited for the separation ofnucleic acids. CE is routinely used for the separation of double-stranded
DNA
fragments; single-stranded DNA fragments andpolymerase chain reaction (
PCR
) products in our laboratory. CE is a versatile tool for separating nucleic acids in molecularbiology (
1
). CE has the advantages of automation, small sample requirement, fast and efficient separation, real-time detection, andnegligible buffer waste in comparison to slab-gel electrophoresis. However, the major drawback of CE is low amount of samplethroughput because samples are analyzed sequentially. This problem is resolved by using a capillary array electrophoresis(CAE) (
2
,(
3
). Since conventional CE systems are equipped with a single capillary, a practical way to increase throughput is to minimizethe analysis time per sample. This has been accomplished by using a range of an effective length capillary as short as 7 cmand field strength as high as 2000 V/cm for the separations of small ions, drugs, and proteins (
4
-
7
).