Analysis of oligonucleotides by capillary gel electrophoresis

Abstract

Analysis of oligonucleotides with gel-filled capillary columns is a fast, efficient and automated way to check their purity. Gel-filled columns were optimized to separate oligonucleotides which were 20–50 nucleotides in length. The influence of sample size on resolution is discussed. A comparison between capillary gel electrophoresis and slab gel electrophoresis in terms of analysis time per sample is made. In addition to homopolymeric samples, the separation of heteropolymeric oligonucleotides with one nucleotide difference in size is presented and suggests the possibility of using capillary gel electrophoresis as a tool for DNA sequencing.