High performance separations of nucleic acids using capillary electrophoresis and high‐performance liquid chromatography

Abstract

High resolution separations of nucleic acids have been performed using high performance capillary electrophoresis (HPCE) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Electropherograms showing HPCE separations of single and double stranded DNA are presented and compared with HPLC separations. Single base resolution of poly(dA) oligonucleotides in the size range of 12 to 60‐mers was achieved in 35 min using HPCE. Plate numbers for HPCE are in the hundreds of thousands and reproducibility is about 1–2 % (RSD). In comparison with HPLC separations, the resolution of nucleic acids obtained using HPCE is much better than that using HPLC, while reproducibility of HPCE is comparable with that of HPLC.