Figure 1.

(a) Sixteen yeast chromosomes, ranging from 1.9 Mbp (Top) to 225 kbp (Bottom) resolve vertically into 12 bands using 120° PFGE. Steady fields applied in the horizontal dimension: E = 2 V/cm for 7 hr, E = 6 V/cm for 70 min, E = 8 V/cm for 40 min, E = 10 V/cm for 30 min. (b) (Left) Chromosomal separation. (Center) Trapping at 10 V/cm for 30 min. (Right) Reversibly trapped molecules regain mobility at 2 V/cm and are seen in the intermediate column. (c) Log-log plot of critical field strength vs. size during agarose gel electrophoresis where E_crit is the field strength sufficient to cause 50% trapping of a band over a 1-cm path. Data from the present study (•) and from Turmel et al. (7) (■) were obtained in steady fields. Data of Viovy et al. (9) (▵) were obtained in PFGE. Their largest size point is also shown (×) corrected for field-averaging effect. λ shear data (○) refer to the largest surviving concatemers of λ (see Fig. 4). Dashed line indicates slope of −1.