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In 1937 Tiselius described his moving boundary electrophoresis; Konig published the first experiment on the use of filter paper as stabilizing medium in electrophoresis. It, however, took ten more years for filter paper electrophoresis to become popular as an efficient, inexpensive, routine technique. This paved the way for several other porous stabilizing media, most of which are gels such as agar, starch, and polyacrylamide. Zone electrophoresis is the name given to the separation technique employing these stabilizing media. It is also known as electrophoresis in stabilized media. A great advantage o f this analytical tool lies in the fact that a few microlitres of sample are often quite sufficient for a complete electrophoretic separation. Upon separation the molecules are immobilized by fixation in different zones. The molecules are then detected by staining them on the supporting medium. Other methods to detect the separated molecules are visualization by ultraviolet light, detection by virtue of enzymic reaction, or detection by radioactivity, if the molecules are radiolabelled. Alternatively, the separated components can be eluted from the medium and thus become available for further studies. Zone electrophoresis can also be utilized as large-scale or preparative method whereby large amounts of a component can be purified for further characterization.