DNA Characterization

Characterizing DNA, especially its size, has played a critical role in biomedical research, diagnosis and forensic science. The size of DNA is commonly measured by electrophoresis and is detected by the fluorescence of ethidium bromide, a potent carcinogen, which has raised many safety and environmental concerns. For this application note, a DAWN^® multi-angle laser light scattering (MALLS) detector was connected to an HPLC system with a size exclusion chromatography (SEC) column to determine the molar mass and size of a super-coiled circular duplex DNA.