Native Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis

Agarose gel electrophoresis is generally adequate for resolving nucleic acid fragments in the size range of 100 nucleotides to around 10–15 kb (see Chapter 13 ). Below this range, fragments are both difficult to separate and hard to visualize because of diffusion within the gel matrix. These problems are solved by native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE). Using native PAGE, fragments as small as 10 bp and up to 1 kb can be separated with a resolution of as little as 1 bp.