Capillary Electrophoresis (or CE). What a mouthful. But if you have been in the biological field, especially anything to do with genetics, this is known as the mainstay analysis tool of the industry. We introduce capillary electrophoresis (or CE) here because it covers all the techniques of providing 1st wave genetic genealogy testing. Included under this banner is the CE frame (length) analysis technique used to determine STR marker repeat counts. Also termed CE fragment analysis more generally. As well as the single-primer, chain-terminated Sanger Sequencing which has been the mainstay of DNA analysis and the source technique for the first HGP.
The widespread adoption brought prices down and enabled the start of the genetic genealogy analysis around 2000. This was a mainstay technique in the field for almost ten years and somewhat continues in use today. The eventual downfall is the lower throughput and lack of whole-genome capture that has come about with what we term the second wave of genetic genealogy testing (via microarray testing) and now the third wave based on high throughput sequencing.
Common techniques related to this use are:
(a) Use of primers to tag the targeted regions for the large PCR duplication of an area of intended analysis
(b) Use of fluorescent tags of a base-pair in order to read the value at that location added during the PCR duplication
(c) Chain termination to create PCR-segments of differing lengths to thus read the sequence of each base-pair along a strand
The widespread adoption brought prices down and enabled the start of the genetic genealogy analysis around 2000. This was a mainstay technique in the field for almost ten years and somewhat continues in use today. The eventual downfall is the lower throughput and lack of whole-genome capture that has come about with what we term the second wave of genetic genealogy testing (via microarray testing) and now the third wave based on high throughput sequencing.
Common techniques related to this use are:
(a) Use of primers to tag the targeted regions for the large PCR duplication of an area of intended analysis
(b) Use of fluorescent tags of a base-pair in order to read the value at that location added during the PCR duplication
(c) Chain termination to create PCR-segments of differing lengths to thus read the sequence of each base-pair along a strand
STR Markers
Using a technique of CE known as frame (length) analysis,Sanger Sequencing
A method to do one to a dozen or so SNPs at a time; each located anywhere on the genome. The technique can be used for up to about 900 base-pairs. Full-sequencing of the approximately 16,000 base-pairs of the mitochondria is offered using a modified form of this technique.References
- UCD LibreText textbook entry on Capillary_Electrophoresis
- ThermoFisher Scientific page on Capillary Electrophoresis
- Khan Academy page on Sequencing using CE
- John Butler of NIST presentation on Forensic STR Processing — the use that brought the costs down to allow genetic genealogy to really start.
- Wikipedia entry on Capillary Electrophoresis; more for completeness but there is a lot more material available