A Novel Method for Quantification of Circulating DNA in Serum by Capillary Zone Electrophoresis

In this paper, we first presented a novel method for quantification of circulating DNA in human serum based on capillary zone electrophoresis with laser-induced fluorescence detection (CZE-LIF). The serum was digested by proteinase to release free DNA, and then CZE-LIF system was used for the quantification of total circulating DNA. This method was successfully used to quantify the circulating DNA levels in sera from healthy individuals and certain cancer patients. We found the significantly elevated circulating DNA levels in certain prostate cancer patients. Our results demonstrated that CZE-LIF system has good linearity, excellent sensitivity (0.5 ng/mL DNA), satisfactory reproducibility (RSDs in one day and between days were both less than 5%) and reliability, and is well suitable to the quantification of the circulating DNA in human serum or plasma.