Gene Dosage in Capillary Electrophoresis: Prenatal Diagnosis of Downs Syndrome and Rh D/d Genotyping

The first instrumentation for capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) became available 10 years ago, and, since that time, interest in the technique has grown at a steady pace. However, although CZE has been embraced by a diverse scientific community that includes biochemists, chemists, and molecular biologists, acceptance of CZE by the clinical laboratory community has been markedly slower. Nevertheless, two recent monographs, devoted to this particular topic, testify to the growing interest of CZE in the clinical science (1 ,2 ). In these two special issues, some reviews are devoted specifically to the topic of DNA analysis (3 –6 ). Another issue of Electrophoresis , dedicated to reviews on general topics of CZE, has recently appeared (7 ). An additional number of recent reviews testify to the great interest in the use of CZE for analysis of DNA for diagnostic purposes (8 –13 ).