Separation of acidic and basic proteins by capillary electrophoresis using gemini surfactants and gemini-capped nanoparticles as buffer additives

Abstract

This paper demonstrated simultaneous separation of acidic and basic proteins using cationic gemini surfactants as buffer additives in capillary electrophoresis. We showed that even at a low concentration (0.1 mmol·L−1) of alkanediyl-α,ω-bis(dimethyloctadecylammonium bromide) (18-s-18), the wall adsorption of both acidic and basic proteins could be effectively suppressed under acidic conditions. Smaller micelle size (e.g., s = 5–8) is more effective for the separation of acidic proteins than larger micelle size (e.g., s 10). Varying the spacer length of gemini surfactants can influence the electrophoretic mobility and selectivity of proteins to achieve the desired separation. Under the optimized conditions, RSDs of the migration time were less than 0.8% and 2.2% for run-to-run and day-to-day assays, respectively, and protein recoveries ranged from 79% to 100.4%. Furthermore, we also investigated the use of gemini surfactant-capped gold nanoparticles (gemini@AuNPs) as buffer additives in protein separation. Introduction of AuNPs into the buffer shortened the analysis time and slightly improved the separation efficiencies. Finally, we presented the applications of this method in the analysis of biological samples, including plasma, red blood cells and egg white.