Factors influencing the electrokinetic injection of oligonucleotides in capillary gel electrophoresis when using laser‐induced fluorescence detection

Capillary gel electrophoresis (CGE) is a powerful tool for the analysis of oligonucleotides owing to its extraordinary resolving power. However, the only feasible injection mode for CGE, electrokinetic injection, can cause bias of the injected amount and thus reproducibility issues for CGE methods. Although the source of the bias in electrokinetic injection for analysis of small molecules by capillary zone electrophoresis has long been identified, there are very few studies on electrokinetic injection issues for biological molecules analyzed by CGE. In this study, we report three issues related to electrokinetic injection for oligonucleotides. First, the relationship between the injection amount and the sample solution resistance is not always linear for oligonucleotides, as has been observed for small molecules. Second, the injecting water prior to an oligonucleotide sample dramatically improves the reproducibility of both the injected amount and resolution through a ‘stacking‐like’ mechanism. Third, optimizing the gel concentration dramatically increases the amount of oligonucleotide that is injected into the column. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.