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On the reptation theory of gel electrophoresis
Author(s) -
Slater Gary W.,
Noolandi Jaan
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
biopolymers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.556
H-Index - 125
eISSN - 1097-0282
pISSN - 0006-3525
DOI - 10.1002/bip.360250305
Subject(s) - reptation , chemistry , verifiable secret sharing , chain (unit) , electrophoresis , gel electrophoresis , field (mathematics) , electric field , scaling , statistical physics , dna , chemical physics , chromatography , polymer , physics , computer science , quantum mechanics , mathematics , geometry , pure mathematics , programming language , biochemistry , organic chemistry , set (abstract data type)
We introduce a new biased reptation theory that allows a qualitative and semiquantitative study of DNA gel electrophoresis. We prove that stretching of the end‐to‐end vector of a very long charged reptating chain in an electric field occurs in a short period of time during a typical electrophoresis experiment, and that this leads to a field‐dependent mobility only weaky dependent upon the size of the chain, in agreement with experiments on DNA. We also propose a practical technique to avoid chain stretching. Finally, many scaling laws are predicted, most of them being verifiable by experiment.