ABSTRACT
The well-known industry standard 96-well microplate has evolved to form the basis of many high-throughput approaches in the biosciences over the past 30 years. However, microplates are only permissive of liquid-phase reactions or solid-phase (binding) separations, whereas electrophoresis can derive information about parameters such as size, shape and charge of molecular moieties, as well as acting as a highly resolving separation approach for complex mixtures. Electrophoresis of DNA has traditionally been performed either in agarose or polyacrylamide gel matrix. Much effort has been directed to improved quality agaroses capable of high resolution, but for small fragments, such as those from PCR and post-PCR digests, polyacrylamide still offers the highest resolution. MADGE image analysis software is often advantageous, as is true for electrophoresis in general. Mobility measurements, band intensities/peak heights, pattern matching, image adjustments, etc. are all feasible and can be systematized to a state of semi-automation.
