As with all forms of gel electrophoresis, molecules may be run in their native state, preserving the molecules' higher-order structure. This method is called native-PAGE. Alternatively, a chemical denaturant may be added to remove this structure and turn the molecule into an unstructured molecule whose mobility depends only on its length (because the protein-SDS complexes all have a similar mass-to-charge ratio). This procedure is called SDS-PAGE. Sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) is a method of separating molecules based on the difference of their molecular weight. At the pH at which gel electrophoresis is carried out the SDS molecules are negatively charged and bind to proteins in a set ratio, approximately one molecule of SDS for every 2 amino acids. In this way, the detergent provides all proteins with a uniform charge-to-mass ratio. By binding to the proteins the detergent destroys their secondary, tertiary and/or quaternary structure denaturing them and turning them into negatively charged linear polypeptide chains. When subjected to an electric field in PAGE, the negatively charged polypeptide chains travel toward the anode with different mobility. Their mobility, or the distance traveled by molecules, is inversely proportional to the logarithm of their molecular weight. By comparing the relative ratio of the distance traveled by each protein to the length of the gel (Rf) one can make conclusions about the relative molecular weight of the proteins, where the length of the gel is determined by the distance traveled by a small molecule like a tracking dye.