Separation and Analysis of Nucleic Acids and Their Constituents by Ion-Exclusion and Ion-Exchange Column Chromatography

The recent commercial development of high pressure liquid chromatographic instruments, and the availability of small and uniformly sized resin beads has enhanced the role of column chromatography for the rapid assay of nucleic acid components. A major advancement in the purification and analysis has been due to the recent demonstration that the ion exclusion is more or equally effective than the ion exchange as a separation principle for the resolution of purine and pyrimidine bases, nucleosides, deoxynucleosides and nucleotides^1–3. This article deals with the recent applications of separation principles that have been employed for the separation of nucleic acid constituents. The reader is referred to two review articles of Cohn for the earlier works on this subject^{4, 5}. Separations by chromatography and electrophoresis on paper and thin layers are not described here; several monographs and review articles are available in the literature^6–12.The reader is also referred to a recent methodological study for the base analysis of ribopolynucleotides by chemical tritium labeling which utilizes two dimensional chromatography on thin layers of cellulose as a separation means^{13, 14}.