Brief Introduction
Electrophoresis is considered to be one of the worlds leading technologies for analytical and preparative methods and for innovative applications in all areas of electrophoresis. In life sciences, electrophoresis is also one of the most ingenious and important methods with ubiquitous applications within both research and routine.Continuing to serve as an indispensable vehicle for the dissemination of efficacious, Electrophoresis advances by covering all operative approaches from gels through capillaries to chips.
What is Gel Electrophoresis?
Electrophoresis is an analytical technique which separates molecules on the basis of its mass to charge ratio. Gel electrophoresis utilizes a gel as a sieving and anti-convective medium in order to separate molecules and proteins. In gel electrophoresis, an electric field is applied across the gel. Charged molecules such as DNA and proteins begin to migrate across the gel in the presence of an electric field. The rule of movement in gel electrophoresis is larger molecules move more slowly, while smaller molecules move through the gel quickly. Also higher charged species move down the gel more quickly as they will be attracted by the opposite electric field. This difference in speeds between molecules causes them to separate out on the gel (similar to cars on a race track that will separate as the race goes on based on their performance). Finally different bands of different sized and charged molecules will form on the gel.
Applications of Gel Electrophoresis
Gel electrophoresis is widely used in forensics, molecular biology, genetics, and biotechnology. It has been widely used to analyze nucleic acids and proteins. The use of SDS-PAGE (sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis) type of gel electrophoresis is utilized in the analysis of proteins. In this technique sodium dodecyl sulfate acts as a dissociating agent in order to separate proteins into polypeptide chains. This detergent wraps around the polypeptide chain in a constant weight proportion, thus making the intrinsic charges of the peptides negligible, and thus the movement of the peptides will be independent of charge, and be only a linear function of their logarithm of molecular weights.