Utilization of plastic tubes for the first dimension of two-dimensional gel electrophoresis

Abstract

A new technique for tube-gel isoelectric focusing (IEF) using plastic tubes instead of glass tubes in the first dimension of two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) was developed for proteomic analysis of both denatured and non-denatured proteins. The plastic tubes have advantages in handling gels over glass tubes. The plastic tubes were also applied successfully to native gel electrophoresis, blue-native gel electrophoresis, agarose gel IEF, acid-urea gel electrophoresis and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) gel electrophoresis for the first dimension of 2-DE.