Electrophoretic behavior of DNA‐methyl‐CpG‐binding domain protein complexes revealed by capillary electrophoreses laser‐induced fluorescence

The free solution electrophoretic behavior of DNA-protein complexes depends on their charge and mass in a certain experimental condition, which are two fundamental properties of DNA-protein complexes in free solution. Here, we used CE LIF to study the free solution behavior of DNA-methyl-CpG-binding domain protein (MBD2b) complexes through exploring the relationship between the mobilities, charge, and mass of DNA-protein complexes. This method is based on the effective separation of free DNA and DNA-protein complexes because of their different electrophoretic mobility in a certain electric field. In order to avoid protein adsorption, a polyacrylamide-coated capillary was used. Based on the evaluation of the electrophoretic behavior of formed DNA-MBD2b complexes, we found that the values of (mu(0)/mu)-1 were directly proportional to the charge-to-mass ratios of formed complexes, where the mu(0) and mu are the mobility of free DNA probe and DNA-protein complex, respectively. The models were further validated by the complex mobilities of protein with various lengths of DNA probes. The deviation of experimental and calculated charge-to-mass ratios of formed complexes from the theoretical data was less than 10%, suggesting that our models are useful to analyze the DNA-binding properties of the purified MBD2b protein and help to analyze other DNA-protein complexes. Additionally, this study enhances the understanding of the influence of the charge-to-mass ratios of formed DNA-protein complexes on their separation and electrophoretic behaviors.