What type of support medium can be utilized to determine the molecular weight of proteins in electrophoresis?

The use of polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) is particularly effective for determining the molecular weight of proteins due to the ability of the gel to form a porous matrix. This matrix can be finely adjusted by varying the concentration of acrylamide, which allows for the separation of proteins according to their size. Smaller proteins are able to move more freely through the gel, while larger proteins encounter more resistance, resulting in stratified movement that can be measured.

Polyacrylamide also provides excellent resolution and can handle a wide range of protein sizes, making it the standard choice for protein separation and molecular weight determination. This technique is routinely used in biochemistry and molecular biology to analyze protein samples, facilitating the estimation of molecular weights by comparing the migration distance of the sample proteins to that of known protein standards on the same gel.

In contrast, agarose gel is typically used for the electrophoresis of larger biomolecules such as nucleic acids, while cellulose acetate is less commonly employed for protein analysis. Silica gel is primarily utilized in chromatography rather than electrophoresis. Thus, polyacrylamide gel is recognized as the most suitable medium for accurate molecular weight determination of proteins through electrophoresis.