User:Ragesoss/History of electrophoresis

The history of electrophoresis begins in earnest with the work of Arne Tiselius in the 1930s, and new separation processes and chemical analysis techniques based on electrophoresis continue to be developed into the 21st century. Tiselius, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, developed the "Tiselius apparatus" for moving boundary electrophoresis, which was described in 1937 in the well-known paper "A New Apparatus for Electrophoretic Analysis of Colloidal Mixtures". The method spread slowly until the advent of effective zone electrophoresis methods in the 1940s and 1950s, which used filter paper or gels as supporting media. By the 1960s, increasingly sophisticated gel electrophoresis methods made it possible to separate biological based on minute physical and chemical differences, helping to drive the rise of molecular biology. Gel electrophoresis and related techniques became the basis for a wide range of biochemical methods, such as protein fingerprinting, Southern blot and similar blotting procedures, DNA sequencing, and many more.

Electrophoresis before Tiselius
Early work with the basic principle of electrophoresis dates to the early 19th century.

Development and spread of the Tiselius apparatus
The apparatus designed by Arne Tiselius enabled a range of new applications of electrophoresis in analyzing chemical mixtures. Its development, significantly funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, was an extension of Tiselius's earlier PhD studies. With more assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation, the expensive Tiselius apparatus was built at a number of major of major centers of chemical research.

Rise of zone electrophoresis
By the late 1940s, new electrophoresis methods were beginning to address some of the shortcomings of the moving boundary electrophoresis of the Tiselius apparatus, which was not capable of completely separating electrophoretically similar compounds. Rather than charged molecules moving freely through solutions, the new methods used solid or gel matrices to separate compounds into discrete and stable bands (zones); in 1950 Tiselius dubbed these methods "zone electrophoresis".

Zone electrophesis found widespread application in biochemistry after Oliver Smithies introduced starch gel as an electrophoretic substrate in 1955. Starch gel (and later polyacrylamide and other gels) enabled the efficient separation of proteins, making it possible with relatively simple technology to analyze complex protein mixtures and identify minute differences in related proteins.

Widespread application
Since the 1950s, electrophoresis methods have diversified considerably, and new methods and applications are still being developed.