Re: Alternate mathods to diagnose abnormal hemoglobin besides electrophoresis?

There are many ways to diagnose protein abnormalities.  For example in 
sickle cell, one amino acid in haemoglobin is mutated to a different amino 
acid in the sickle form of the protein but not in the normal form.  This 
mutation can be detected by monitoring the change in mass with mass 
spectrometry of the protein or mass spectrometry of proteolytic digests of 
the protein.

There are many other methods to detect protein abnormalities including 
uncharacteristic enzymatic activity in enzyme assays and 
different/noncharacteristic binding to antibodies.