Semi-crosslinked polyacrylamides as high-resolution and dynamic self-coating sieving matrices for protein capillary electrophoresis

This paper describes non-gel capillary sieving electrophoresis employing semi-crosslinked polyacrylamide as a high performance and low viscous replaceable separation matrix for separation of non-denatured protein separation. Arising from the fine sieving and dynamic coating ability of this polymer, a mixture of basic proteins lysozyme, cytochrome C, ribonuclease A, and trypsin was resolved with excellent reproducibility. Mixing different semi-crosslinked polyacrylamides together further improves the separation. The separtion mechanism was analyzed. With network structure developed to an intermediate state between crosslinked gel and linear polymer solutions, these semi-crosslinked polyacrylamide polymers demonstrate a promise as a new class of size sieving separation medium, not only in capillary electrophoresis, but also in microfluidic chip separation schemes.