The slab gel polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis technique at modest voltages around 100 -300 V is still the primary separation technique used by biologists; capillary electrophoresis is rarely used. However, research by analytical chemists in this research area of standard voltage electrophoresis is severely lacking.  Pluronic gels are triblock co-polymers of ethylene oxide (EO) and propylene oxide (PO) having the general formula H[OCH2CH2]a[OCH(CH3)CH2]b[OCH2CH2]aOH where a=100 and b=70. These liquid crystal polymers can aggregate in aqueous solutions into spherical micelles with a hydrophobic PO core and hydrophilic EO on the outside. Below room temperature, the hydration layer keeps the polymer in solution. However as the temperature is raised, the hydrophilic chains become desolvated due to breaking of hydrogen bonds favoring hydrophobic interaction of the exposed PO groups resulting in gel formation.  We have found it easy to prepare gels inside tubes for use in batch electrophoretic separations by first filling the tubes with a cooled polymer solution and then warming them to room temperature.   Using 1 mm ID x 7.3 cm glass tubes filled with 24% w/v Pluronic F127 gel, electrophoretic separations of the anionic test compound Alizarin Red, cytochrome c, and a five peptide/protein standard mixture have been done.  We have found that the target electrophoresis band gel can be easily transferred into a HPLC sample vial and cooled down to 5 �C before dilution to give back the solution at room temperature within 5 minutes. The solution mixture of pluronic polymer with either Alizarin Red or cytochrome c has been identified and quantified on a polymeric monolithic column and photodiode array detector within 3 minutes. Mass spectrometry (MS) of peptides in a pluronic gel without a major prior sample cleanup has been shown feasible.

Narrow bore tube pluronic gel electrophoresis with off-line HPLC or MS detection

246th National Meeting (2013)

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