Performance of a series of novel N-substituted acrylamides in capillary electrophoresis of DNA fragments

DNA separations by capillary electrophoresis in viscous solutions of novel polymers, made with Ω-hydroxyl, N-substituted acrylamides (notably N-acryloyl amino propanol, AAP and N-acryloyl amino butanol, AAB) are evaluated. Whereas in standard poly(acrylamide), at 6% concentration, the theoretical plate number (N) does not exceed 500 000, in 6% poly(AAP) N reaches 922 000 and in 6% poly(AAB) N values as high as 1 200 000 are obtained. Also, copolymers of AAP and AAB give N values in excess of 1 million plates. The two novel monomers (AAP and AAB) remain extremely stable during alkaline hydrolysis and display very good hydrophilicity, while being devoid of the noxious habit of auto-polymerization and auto-reticulation exhibited by the previous monomer of this series (N-acryloyl amino ethoxy ethanol). The reasons for such a good performance of the Ω-substituted acrylamide derivatives could be that their polymers may form hydrogen bonds via their distal -OH group during DNA separation.