title: Electrokinetic and Kerr effect contributions to electric birefringence images of agarose electrophoresis gels.
abstract: Multilinear regression analysis is used to test a model (Lanan et al., 1991) for electric birefringence imaging (EBI) of DNA fragment bands in agarose electrophoresis gels. EBI signals attributed to localized electro-kinetic gel distortion and to intrinsic DNA birefringence are studied by fitting ethidium bromide fluorescence profiles to EBI results. Fluorescence polarization imaging (FPI) is used to assess the influence of localized gel distortion on nucleic acid orientation across a fragment band. It is shown that DNA aligns parallel, on average, with an applied electric field independent of its location within a band. DNA orientation varies as the 1.2 power in electric field strength under the conditions tested.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109-1055.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lanan
authors.forename: M D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Morris
mesh_terms: D001718:Birefringence; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D004563:Electrochemistry; D004587:Electrophoresis, Agar Gel; D004996:Ethidium; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005454:Fluorescence Polarization; D012044:Regression Analysis
chemical_list: D004247:DNA; D004996:Ethidium