Analysis of intact bacteria, bacterial DNA and mutagenic alkaloids by capillary electrophoresis

Abstract

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) has become popular due to its high efficiency, high selectivity, high throughput screening ability, and simplicity in nature and operation. In this thesis, efforts were dedicated to the development of various CE methods as well as their applications in the analysis of biological and biomedical samples. Analysis of intact bacteria based on diluted polymer addition into run buffer by CE were performed and demonstrated to be feasible. Besides, the methods were successfully applied to bacterial pathogen determination using fish fluid as matrix. Being an alternative to slab gel electrophoresis, a CE method with laser induced fluorescence detection using poly(vinylpyrrolidone) as a sieving matrix was developed for the separation of DNA and mutated genes from bacteria. In addition, a micellar electrokinetic chromatography and an on-line preconcentration dynamic pH junction-sweeping method were developed for the analysis of mutagenic pyrrolizidine alkaloids in traditional Chinese medicine.