BN-PAGE problem

[Jeremy Coate]

I am trying to run a BN-PAGE on thylakoid membranes from soybean. For some
reason the blue dye front is migrating strangely.  Rather than migrating to
the bottom of the gel, most of it seems to hang up in the middle (it forms
about a 4cm smear centered roughly around 10% on a 6-15% gradient).  It
seems to migrate less the more dodecyl maltoside I use to solubilize the
proteins.  It looks like I am getting good solubilization of the proteins,
though it seems like I'm loading less protein than I think.  Does this have
to do with the amount of protein in the well, or the amount of DM?

Thanks for any insights.
Jeremy