Capillary Electrophoresis in the Undergraduate Curriculum in Biochemistry and Forensic Chemistry

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Chemistry (12) Capillary electrophoresis (CE) techniques have become widely accepted by the scientific community. To fully prepare students for careers in science or to pursuit advanced degree, we are including CE methodology into our undergraduate curriculum. Thin layer chromatography, SDS-polyacrylamide and agarose gel electrophoresis, and conventional liquid chromatography have been used for some time to separate biomolecules in our undergraduate biochemistry laboratories. With the acquisition of a versatile CE system that can be used in the analysis of many types of molecules, we are now adapting and implementing a specially designed set of experiments into our undergraduate biochemistry and forensic chemistry curriculum. The experiments and protocols are all adapted from educational and research journals, and NSF supported projects that have been fully tested. These selected experiments allow our students to perform qualitative and quantitative analysis of samples of biological, pharmaceutical, and forensic significance (e.g., protein, DNA, and drug analysis) by direct comparison of CE to other methods of instrumental separation. We are also developing collaborations between the departments of law enforcement and justice administration, biology, and chemistry on the use of CE methodology. After successful incorporation of CE in biochemistry and forensic chemistry courses as anticipated, we plan to expand the applications of the CE system to general, organic, analytical, physical, and inorganic chemistry courses. The CE system is also used in undergraduate research in our department. We plan to disseminate the outcome of this project through publications in appropriate journals, attending scientific meetings, and establishing a web site for the project.