Preparative capillary electrophoresis with wide-bore capillaries

Sample load is in proportion to the square of capillary inner diameter in capillary electrophoresis (CE). With wide-bore capillaries, single run fraction collection of CE often gives enough material for further identification techniques, such as matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) MS and peptide sequencing. Limitations of using wide bore capillaries for CE and solutions to them are discussed in this investigation. An existing CE instrument has been modified in order to use wide-bore capillaries. Tryptic digest peptides have been identified with off-line wide bore CE-MALDI-TOF-MS techniques.