Improved banding pattern of rat plasma lipoproteins developed by agarose gel electrophoresis at pH 7.0

The use of a conventional agarose gel electrophoretic method to separate rat plasma lipoproteins resulted in a rather poor resolution of lipoproteins of lower density. Therefore, attempts were made to improve the resolution by running the electrophoresis under different conditions. It was shown that rat plasma lipoproteins could be separated into at least three fractions by agarose gel electrophoresis in phosphate buffer at pH 7.0. Using rat plasma lipoproteins isolated by sequential flotation as standards, these fractions were shown to correspond to high-density lipoprotein (HDL2), very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) and a mixed low-density lipoprotein (LDL)/high-density lipoprotein (HDL1) fraction. Since VLDL is completely separated from the other lipoprotein classes the method could be used to monitor changes in plasma VLDL.