Molecular sieving polymer for DNA/RNA separation in capillary electrophoresis

Abstract

In capillary polymer electrophoresis, the property of polymer sieving matrix dominates the migration behavior of DNA/RNA. We investigated the capillary electrophoresis of RNA ranging from 100 nt to 10,000 nt in polyacrylamide (PA) solutions with different molecular weights (Mw) and different concentrations. We observed that the resolution length (RSL) of RNA fragments was improved and the migration time was prolonged, when polymer concentration was increased. The resolution for small RNA fragments ([Formula: see text]1000 nt) was improved with the increase of polymer concentration, whereas the large ones ([Formula: see text]3000 nt) became inseparable. In addition, we estimated the smallest resolvable nucleotide length (Ls) by the plot of RSL against RNA size.