Pulsed field capillary electrophoresis of multikilobase length nucleic acids in dilute methyl cellulose solutions

Pulsed field capillary gel electrophoresis in dilute methyl cellulose solutions is used to separate nucleic acid fragments in the size range 75-23,000 base pairs. Field inversion is shown to increase resolution for fragments longer than about 500 base pairs. Methyl cellulose solutions as dilute as 0.01% can be used. Intermolecular hydrogen bonding is suggested as the cause of apparent cellulose fiber entanglement at concentrations below the calculated entanglement limit. The 1-kb DNA ladder and the lambda DNA/HindIII restriction fragment mixtures are each baseline resolved in a 28-cm capillary in less than 9 min at 180 V/cm (dc component).