Agarose gel electrophoresis lacks the capability to resolve DNA fragments and smears starting around 20 Kb, in a phenomena termed, "limiting mobility". Functionally, limiting mobility results in the co-migration of large DNA fragments in excess of the size threshold as they are unable to migrate in a size dependent manner. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) ameliorates these issues by alternating the direction of the electric field. This technique uses an agarose gel to separate fragments up to 10 Mb in size. While PFGE is a powerful technique, enabling the visual analysis of large DNA fragments and smears – including intact genomic DNA – it is time consuming, requiring days of preparation time, significant amounts of genomic DNA, and electrophoresis times between 15 and 24 hours. The FEMTO Pulse Automated Pulsed-Field CE Instrument accelerates this workflow significantly, decreasing preparation time and completing pulsed-field capillary electrophoresis (PFCE) runs in approximately 1 hour.
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