A random-walk model for retardation of interacting species during gel electrophoresis: implications for gel-shift assays

We recently showed that intermolecular DNA triplexes can form during gel electrophoresis when a faster migrating single strand overtakes a slower migrating band containing a duplex of appropriate sequence. We proposed a model to account for the resulting apparent comigration of triplexes with the duplex band when the lifetime of the triplex is much shorter than the time of electrophoresis. The model predicts that short-lived complexes can be detected by a gel-shift assay if the faster migrating component of the complex is labeled, a slower migrating component is in excess, and the complex itself migrates more slowly than either of the components. In this case the labeled component, after dissociation from the complex, overtakes a slower migrating band of the free, unlabeled second component and can be captured by the unlabeled component and again retarded; after dissociation of the newly formed complex the cycle is repeated. If the concentration of unlabeled component in the band is larger than some critical value (c(cr)), most of the labeled component becomes trapped in this band during the entire time of gel electrophoresis, thus effectively comigrating with the slower migrating unlabeled component. We call this mechanism of comigration "cyclic capture and dissociation" (CCD). Here we present a quantitative analysis of the model of CCD comigration which predicts that CCD comigration can be used not only for the detection of relatively short-lived complexes, but also for estimation of the specificity of complex formation.