Pulsed electrophoresis, description

As quoted by Slater et al. [125], the description sketched above is oversimplified. A more rigorous treatment [125, 128, 135, 150] predicts a non-monotonous M , dependence of the mobility around N, which has been confirmed experimentally [125,128] (Fig. 20). The asymptotic behavior in regimes i and ii, however, is not modified. The saturation of the mobility at large N is a dramatic nuisance for the electrophoretic separation of large biomolecules such as chromosomal DNA with sizes ranging from a few to 2 x 10 kilobase-pairs (kbp) (a base pair has a molecular weight around 360 Da). Until the recent introduction of pulsed electrophoresis, the practical range of separation hardly reached 100 kbp. 

C. Bustamante, S. Gurrieri, and S. Smith, Tibtecb 11, 23-30 (1993). Towards a Molecular Description of Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis. ... 

Bustamante C., Gurrieri S., and Smith S.B. 1993. Towards a molecular description of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. Trends Biotechnol. 11 23-30. 

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