ABSTRACT
Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is a relatively new separation method which has proven to be especially useful for the analysis of biomolecules. This report is concerned mainly with the separation of peptides, although the literature reports many applications for protein, amino acid, and nucleic acid research. Free solution CE involves the migration of a charged solute in a narrow bore capillary under high electric field conditions. This chapter provides a discussion of some applications of CE that may be of interest to those in the area of biotechnology, protein and peptide chemistry, and analytical chemistry. CE has been used to assess rapidly the purity of peptides and proteins from various sources. Although CE can be used routinely for analysis of synthetic peptides, because of the extremely small sample requirements it is ideally suited to the analysis of valuable materials derived from tissue. In addition to the free solution applications, the literature reports other uses for CE instrumentation.
