Capillary electrophoresis of nucleic acids

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is a powerful and relatively new technique for nucleic acid mapping and can be used along with conventional slab gel electrophoresis (SGE) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). There are several types of separation mechanisms by which species can be separated in electrophoresis: capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE), micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC), capillary gel electrophoresis (CGE), and capillary sieving electrophoresis (CSE), all of which are capable of being used for qualification and quantification of nucleic acids. Laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) detection enables highly sensitive detection of nucleic acids. CGE – which uses an agarose or acrylamide gel – and CSE – which uses an entangled polymer solution – are used rather than HPLC and SGE for sequencing of large nucleic acids for several reasons: high-resolution power, high-speed sequencing, ease of automation, and small sample volume. Combining the advantages of CSE and LIF detection with a four- or two-color labeling method enables sequencing of more than 1000 bases within 1 h. When implemented in capillary array electrophoresis (CAE), high-throughput and high-speed sequencing systems contributed to an expansion of the sequence analysis of DNA fragments and was used as the major technique for sequencing in order to achieve the goal of the Human Genome Project (HGP).