Immobilized pH gradients and reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography: a strategy for characterization of haemoglobin variants with electrophoretic mobility identical to that of Hb A. The case of Hb San Diego.

The preparative aspects of immobilized pH gradients applied to abnormal haemoglobins (Hb) is described. As shown with the example of Hb San Diego, this method is successful even with as small a difference in pHi as 0.01 pH unit. For characterization of such neutral variants, reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography is demonstrated to be a very efficient tool.