Capillary Electrophoresis in Undergraduate Education

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The purchase of a capillary electrophoresis (CE) instrument will enable undergraduate students to become familiar with state of the art electrophoresis methodology and with computerized data acquisition and instrument control. Experiments using the instrument will replace or greatly enhance experiments presently performed in two upper level chemistry courses, Instrumental Analysis and General Biochemistry. The instrument will also be used in undergraduate research. In Instrumental Analysis, commercial products will be analyzed for organic acid composition, demonstrating the usefulness of CE in the analysis of small molecules. This experiment will replace one in which ion chromatography is used to determine the inorganic ion composition of tapwater. In General Biochemistry, CE will initially be used to add two new experiments to the laboratory course: 1) enzymatic and chemical digestion of a protein followed by separation and quantitation by free zone CE and 2) a protein-substrate binding analysis by affinity CE techniques followed by mathematical treatment of the data by the method of Scatchard. These experiments will allow the students exposure to both additional conventional and computational biotechniques. It is likely that CE will assume increasing importance in the undergraduate teaching laboratory. We intend to share the results of our experiences both through journal publication and presentations at regional and national scientific meetings.