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Updated: Jun 3, 2026

Agarose Gel Electrophoresis for the Separation of DNA Fragments
Published on: April 20, 2012
The dynamics of DNA gel electrophoresis
1Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA.
Abstract:
Gel electrophoresis of DNA has improved greatly in the last decade, mostly owing to the invention of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (1). This has enabled the separation of DNA more than two orders of magnitude longer than what was previously possible (2-4). This chapter will review what is understood about the microscopic behavior of DNA undergoing electrophoresis, which has reached a stage of sophistication allowing one to predict the mobility of a specified DNA molecule in a given system. The author's own research will be emphasized, much of the most elaborate calculations done in collaboration with Thomas L. Madden (5-9) and J. D. Reger (10). It is hoped that this chapter will be comprehensible to most biologists, and to this end, it eschews a complete technical treatment of the subject that can be found in the cited literature.
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