An exactly solvable Ogston model of gel electrophoresis VI. Towards a theory for macromolecules

In this article, we present a generalized version of our lattice model of low‐field gel electrophoresis that allows us to treat the case of macromolecules such as short linear or circular oligomers and semi‐flexible rods. We show that free‐solution electrophoresis problems can be seen as random walks in the conformational space of the analyte. For sufficiently small molecules, our mathematical approach provides exact mobilities. In a quenched gel‐like environment, however, both conformational and positional degrees of freedom must be used, but exact solutions can also be obtained. As an example, we then investigate several two‐dimensional model gels, as well as a simple channel system where we see evidence of entropic effects that cannot be captured by the traditional Ogston concept of free volume.

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