HIGH-PERFORMANCE CAPILLARY ELECTROPHORESIS OF PROTEINS USING SODIUM DODECYL SULFATE-POLY(ETHYLENE OXIDE)

High-performance capillary electrophoresis using the replaceable poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) polymer network in the presence of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) is shown to be a viable alternative to SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The effects of the PEO molecular mass and polymer concentration on the separation of proteins were studied. The 100 000 PEO polymer provided good resolution of the protein standards and was selected for detailed studies. The preparation of this gel at various concentrations is relatively simple and makes it feasible for Ferguson analysis. Various recombinant proteins were analyzed using a universal calibration curve generated by the Ferguson analysis. The accuracy of the estimated molecular mass were very much protein dependent, in general it was about 10% off to their sequence based molecular mass.