Fast horizontal electrophoresis. I. Isoelectric focusing and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis using PhastSystem

PhastSystem, an integrated system for horizontal electrophoresis and isoelectric focusing in small gels, including automated staining and destaining, is described. Buffers for electrophoresis are supplied to the gel from buffer strips made of agarose. The separation bed is cooled by Peltier elements. All conditions of significance to the results, both during separation and development, are controlled by a microprocessor. For separation, nine programs are available, each with 9 steps; for development, there are nine programs with 20 steps each. In this paper, we also report results using PhastSystem for purity checking and characterization of monoclonal antibodies after affinity chromatography and also for determining their digestion rate with papain.