Rapid quantification of DNA methylation by high performance capillary electrophoresis.

The actual methods to evaluate total DNA methylation based on high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) are long and tedious due to the specific running buffers required. In this work, a new open-tube capillary electrophoresis system has been applied to the separation of acid hydrolyzed genomic DNA and so, to the evaluation of genomic DNA methylation. Several running conditions were tested but separation of cytosine and 5-methyl-cytosine was only possible by sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) micelle system. The importance of sample dissolution preparation has also been demonstrated. The results of this study open up the possibility of quantification of the relative methylation degree of rapid genomic DNA by a simple method based on high performance capillary electrophoresis (HPCE).