Preparative High Performance Capillary Electrophoresis

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High performance capillary electrophoresis (HPCE) offers important advantages over conventional gel electrophoresis in the characterization of proteins and nucleic acids. It is much faster than the gels and can be fully automated and instrumented with sample injection, detection and collection. In addition, HPCE can separate solutes with a resolution which is one to two orders of magnitude greater than high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) using sample sizes four orders of magnitude smaller than HPLC. However, single-capillary HPCE can only handle solutes loadings of less than 1 ug. It cannot be used at preparatory scales to provide material for further analysis, clinical research or therapeutic application. Most scientists familiar with this technology believe that, if HPCE could be scaled to preparative levels, it would become an indispensable laboratory tool. Unfortunately, scale-up to preparative HPCE is not simple: a preparative HPCE column must dissipate Joule heat effectively while maintaining the extraordinarily high plate efficiency routinely observed in ug. HPCE. To reach the goal of 1 mg HPCE, a study is proposed which combines both theoretical and experimental analyses of single and multiple capillary HPCE. The objectives of this research are to (1) elucidate the mechanisms of heat transfer, separation and dispersion in single capillaries and to apply this knowledge in the (2) design of a preparative-scale HPCE column.