Validation of Separation Accuracy for Small DNAs in a Capillary Gel Electrophoresis System with a Short-Length Fused Silica Capillary

Despite the advantages of capillary gel electrophoresis (CGE) systems for point-of-care testing, they are limited by their large and complex equipment. Accordingly, we evaluated a scaled-down CGE system, we adopted a short-length capillary (total length of 15 cm and effective length of 7.5 cm). The short-length capillary was coated with a nonionic-polymer chain to prevent electroosmotic flow with a direction of flow opposite to that of the DNA samples. We evaluated the electropherograms measured over 3 consecutive days by the CGE system with the short-length capillary under the same experimental conditions using a 100-bp DNA Ladder sample. Comparison of the electropherograms over time showed good stability and repeatability for migration time, mobility, and resolution length, demonstrating the suitability of this system for rapid and accurate point-of-care testing applications. 