Microfabricated instruments for DNA electrophoresis are poised to provide significant sequencing capability in the near term. The state of the art and key remaining issues for this technology are reviewed.
Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is a powerful and relatively new technique for nucleic acid mapping, and can be used along with conventional slab electrophoresis and high‐performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). There are several types of separation techniques of CE, for instance capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE), micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC), capillary gel electrophoresis (CGE), and capillary affinity gel electrophoresis (CAGE), all of which are capable of being used for quantification and qualification of nucleic acids. CZE and MEKC are suitable for the separation of bases, nucleoside and nucleotide monomers, and short nucleic acids. Although the sensitivity of ultraviolet (UV) detection is not as high as HPLC, since the light path length of CE is more than 100 times smaller than that of HPLC, a laser‐excited fluorescence detection system enables highly sensitive detection of nucleic acids. CGE and CAGE, in which electrophoresis is performed in molecular sieving materials of polymer gels, are used rather than HPLC and slab gel electrophoresis (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 CGE and laser fluorescence detection with a four‐ or two‐color labeling method enables sequencing of more than 1000 bases within 1 h. Moreover, recent improvements in capillary array electrophoresis (CAE) with high‐throughput and high‐speed sequencing systems contribute to an expansion of the sequence analysis of DNA fragments in order to achieve the goal of the Human Genome Project (HGP).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.