Publication: THEORY OF END-LABELED FREE SOLUTION ELECTROPHORESIS: USING BRANCHED POLYMERIC LABELS WITH ssDNA

All || By Area || By Year

Title	THEORY OF END-LABELED FREE SOLUTION ELECTROPHORESIS: USING BRANCHED POLYMERIC LABELS WITH ssDNA
Authors/Editors*	S Nedelcu, L McCormick, M Kenward, G W. Slater
Where published*	APS meeting proceedings
How published*	Proceedings
Year*	2005
Volume	0
Number	0
Pages
Publisher	American Physical Society
Keywords
Link
Abstract	End-Labeled Free Solution Electrophoresis allows one to sequence DNA molecules without the need for a sieving matrix. As the name suggests, a label is attached to the DNA molecules in order to eliminate their free-draining property. Recent experimental results have shown that the friction coefficient of short branched labels increase linearly with their total molecular weight, thus suggesting a new strategy to design labels for long ssDNA read lengths. In our work, we study the use of branched labels for this purpose using two different approaches. First, we use an exact analytical theory that neglects excluded volume interactions, and conclude that the friction coefficients increase almost linearly with molecular weight, with strong correction factors that increase rapidly with the length of the label. We then examine the same problem using extensive Molecular Dynamics simulations. Our results indicate that the correction factor is smaller than predicted by the analytical theory, and that the linear regime observed experimentally can extend to fairly large molecular weights.