Graphitic carbon nitride embedded hydrogels for enhanced gel electrophoresis

Mohammad Zarei; Hossein Ahmadzadeh; Elaheh K Goharshadi; Ali Farzaneh

doi:10.1016/j.aca.2015.07.022

Graphitic carbon nitride embedded hydrogels for enhanced gel electrophoresis

Anal Chim Acta. 2015 Aug 5:887:245-252. doi: 10.1016/j.aca.2015.07.022. Epub 2015 Aug 10.

Authors

Mohammad Zarei¹, Hossein Ahmadzadeh¹, Elaheh K Goharshadi², Ali Farzaneh³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, P.O. Box 91779, Iran.
² Department of Chemistry, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, P.O. Box 91779, Iran; Center of Nano Research, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, P.O. Box 91779, Iran. Electronic address: gohari@um.ac.ir.
³ Department of Chemical Engineering, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, P.O. Box 91779, Iran.

PMID: 26320809
DOI: 10.1016/j.aca.2015.07.022

Abstract

Here, we show, for the first time, the use of graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) nanosheets to improve the resolution and efficiency of protein separation in gel electrophoresis. By loading 0.04% (m/v) g-C3N4 nanosheets into the polyacrylamide gel at 25 °C, the thermal conductivity increased approximately 80% which resulted in 20% reduction in Joule heating and overall increase of separation efficiency. Also, polymerization of acrylamide occurred in the absence of tetramethylethylenediamine (TEMED) when the polyacrylamide gel contained g-C3N4 nanosheets. Hence, the g-C3N4 act simultaneously as a polymerization catalyst as well as heat sinks to lower Joule heating effect on band broadening.

Keywords: Band broadening; Gel electrophoresis; Graphitic carbon nitride; Joule heating.