Application of carbon nanotube-matrix assistant native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis to the separation of apolipoprotein A-I and complement C3 Original Research Article

The application of carbon nanotube polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) is being reported so as to improve selectivity of analysis. A novel polyacrylamide gel was manufactured by adding multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNT) when producing the polyacrylamide gel. Carbon nanotube-matrix assistance was used to separate apolipoprotein A-I and complement C3 with native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Significant improvement of the relative selectivity was achieved in the separation between apolipoprotein A-I and complement C3, because of the hydrophobic change of the carbon nanotube surface non-covalently functionalized by the surfactant Triton X-100. These two proteins were identified by MS/MS after electrophoresis. The change of the observed mobility can also be noticed using other nanomaterials such as nano-TiO2 and nano-Al2O3, but no significant improvement of relative selectivities could be observed with the latter nanoparticles.