title: Mannitol influence on the separation of DNA fragments by capillary electrophoresis in entangled polymer solutions.
abstract: A new kind of sieving matrix is presented in this paper to allow satisfactory separation of DNA fragments in a relatively low viscous solution. When a certain amount of mannitol was added to cellulose solution not concentrated enough to separate PGEM-3Zf(+)/HaeIII standards well, a polymer solution with low viscosity but with very good separation effects was obtained. The separation result of this sieving buffer was comparable with those using highly concentrated cellulose solutions. The sieving ability of solutions with different cellulose concentrations and different amounts of mannitol has been investigated. It was proved that 0.5% was the minimum hydroxypropylmethylcellulose (HPMC) concentration that could be used to separate DNA fragments satisfactorily. HPMC solutions with a concentration of less than 0.5% could not separate the standard DNA fragments even in the presence of mannitol. It was found that 6% was the optimized mannitol concentration because either more or less mannitol will lead a decrease of resolution. The principle of the positive influence of mannitol has also been discussed.
authors.affiliation: Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian 116023, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xue
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Lin