Electrophoresis is a biochemical technique
that separates proteins based on their size and net charge.
It does so by passing an electric current accross a medium
such as starch or polyacrylimide gel, so that the proteins
are drawn toward the opposite electrode at different rates
depending on the amount of electrical attraction and the
ease with which they can move through the medium.
The introduction of electrophoresis into evolutionary genetics
represents the introduction of techniques from molecular
biology into evolutionary biology on a mass scale. The affordability
and relative ease of electrophoresis allowed its widescale
adoption by evolutionary biologists working on a range of
issues and organisms. In 1966, Jack Hubby and Richard Lewontin
pioneered the use of electrophoresis to address issues of
genetic variability in natural populations. Within 15 years,
over one thousand papers had been published on genetic variability
using electrophoresis. While there was clearly an electrophoresis
"bandwagon," it is not clear how the widescale
use of electrophoresis altered evolutionary genetics or
if it effected attitudes toward other molecular techniques,
molecular biology in general, or the study of molecular
evolution.
