Highly sensitive analysis of catecholamines by counter-flow electrokinetic supercharging in the constant voltage mode.

Electrokinetic supercharging is one of the most powerful sample-stacking methods that combines field amplified sample injection and transient ITP. In counter-flow electrokinetic supercharging, a constant counter pressure is applied during sample injection in order to counterbalance the movement of the injected sample zone. As a result, there will be a pronounced increase in the amount of sample injected and the portion of the capillary available for electrophoresis.

Acid dissociation constants of melamine derivatives from density functional theory calculations.

Melamine and its hydrolysis products (ammeline, ammelide, and cyanuric acid) recently attracted great attention as major food contaminants. Developing analytical tools to quantify them requires exact knowledge of their acid dissociation constants (pK(a) values). Herein, we calculated the pK(a) values of these melamine derivatives in water, using a density functional theory quantum mechanical method [B3LYP/6-311++G(d,p)] in combination with the Poisson-Boltzmann continuum solvation model.

A thermodynamic approach to designing structure-free combinatorial DNA word sets.

An algorithm is presented for the generation of sets of non-interacting DNA sequences, employing existing thermodynamic models for the prediction of duplex stabilities and secondary structures. A DNA 'word' structure is employed in which individual DNA 'words' of a given length (e.g.

Thermodynamically based DNA strand design.

We describe a new algorithm for design of strand sets, for use in DNA computations or universal microarrays. Our algorithm can design sets that satisfy any of several thermodynamic and combinatorial constraints, which aim to maximize desired hybridizations between strands and their complements, while minimizing undesired cross-hybridizations. To heuristically search for good strand sets, our algorithm uses a conflict-driven stochastic local search approach, which is known to be effective in solving comparable search problems.