Carbohydrates electrophoretic migration

Electrophoretic migration of carbohydrates in solutions of alkali metal salts or alkaline-earth metal salts demonstrates the ability of carbohydrates... 

Two approaches have been proposed to improve the electrophoretic separation between bone and liver ALPs. Both methods exploit differences in the carbohydrate portions of the two forms of ALP. In one, electrophoresis is carried out in the presence of wheat germ lectin, which retards bone ALP migration more than the liver enzyme migration. In the other, serum is treated briefly (i.e.> for 15 min at 37 °C), with neuraminidase to remove part of the terminal sialic acid residues. As the sialic acid residues of bone ALP are more readily attacked than those of liver ALP, the electrophoretic mobility of the bone form is reduced more than that of liver ALP. The improved separation allows quantitative estimates to be made by densitometric scanning (Figure 21-5). ... 

It must be pointed out that the so-called quasi-albumins described by Poulik and Smithies (P13) are immunologically unrelated to albumin and would be more appropriately named quasi-oi-globulins. These proteins migrate just behind albumin in the vertical starch-gel electrophoretic technique of Smithies (S34) and include the group-specific (Gc) components. A fetal plasma protein of similar electrophoretic mobility is known (B12, B13), whose carbohydrate content is 23 mg/g, which clearly distinguishes it from the glycoprotein fetuin. Occasionally the protein persists and can be observed in some neonatal blood plasmas. 

Separations by electrophoresis depend upon differences in rates of migration of the components in a mixture in an applied electric field. Provided the electric field is removed before ions in the sample mixture reach the electrodes, the components may be separated according to their electrophoretic mobility. Electrophoresis is thus an incomplete form of electrolysis. Electrophoresis is especially useful for analysis and separation of amino acids, peptides, proteins, nucleotides, nucleic acids and carbohydrates. 

Electrophoresis is a method with superior resolution used to separate macromolecules from complex mixtures by the application of an electric field. The macromolecules, placed at one end of the matrix and called the gel, are subjected to an electric field. Different macromolecules in the gel will migrate at different speeds, depending on the nature of the gel and the characteristics of the macromolecules. Electrophoretic techniques can be used to separate any biomacromolecule such as nucleic acids, polypetides, and carbohydrates. Tiselius [25] won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1948 for his work on the development of electrophoresis as a technique to separate and characterize proteins from complex mixtures. 

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