Electrophoresis of DNA on a disordered two-dimensional substrate

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel electrophoretic DNA separation method on a disordered 2D substrate, where polymer mobility increases with length, enabling effective separation without thermal activation or diffusion-related band broadening.

Contribution

The study presents a new electrophoresis technique utilizing a disordered substrate that enhances separation efficiency based on polymer length, differing from traditional gel electrophoresis.

Findings

Mobility increases with polymer length, unlike gel electrophoresis.

Separation relies on steric interactions preventing multiple segments from trapping.

Thermal activation is not significant, reducing band broadening.

Abstract

We propose a new method for electrophoretic separation of DNA in which adsorbed polymers are driven over a disordered two-dimensional substrate which contains attractive sites for the polymers. Using simulations of a model for long polymer chains, we show that the mobility increases with polymer length, in contrast to gel electrophoresis techniques, and that separation can be achieved for a range of length scales. We demonstrate that the separation mechanism relies on steric interactions between polymer segments, which prevent substrate disorder sites from trapping more than one DNA segment each. Since thermal activation does not play a significant role in determining the polymer mobility, band broadening due to diffusion can be avoided in our separation method.