Development of an integrated capillary electrophoresis prototype

A capillary electrophoresis (CE) setup prototype for analysing bioreactor samples, has been developed by combining microchip CE, a liquid handler, a high voltage sequencer, and a fluorescence detector into an integrated system. A number of functions were automated, including preparation of the chips by filling the chip with electrolyte and sample. The relative standard deviation was 5.6% in peak area (n=10), and 1.0% in migration time (n=55) for a 0.1 mM fluorescein standard. The system was shown to serve as an effective testbed, and will facilitate the integration of a CE module with the ALIAS (at-line integrated analytical system).