No more smears – expert tips for electrophoresis success

Speaking of Mol Bio

With prior Mol Bio Minutes episodes covering DNA form migration and staining considerations for nucleic acid gel electrophoresis, we tie it all together with this great set of overall tips, tricks and resources for the topic.

Anyone that’s ever run a gel has undoubtedly produced gels with smeared, faint or poorly separated bands. What causes these and how can you avoid them? Well, Aistė Polikaitytė, Scientist at Thermo Fisher Scientific is here to cover the likely causes and troubleshooting tips to help avoid the most common gel issues. She touches on how much sample to load, the importance of reagent selection, gel preparation, separation conditions, staining, as well as purification and contamination considerations.

Helpful resource links mentioned in this episode:

• Selection guide for electrophoresis dyes and buffers
• Learn how using precast E-Gel agarose gel can help avoid common issues
• A helpful troubleshooting guide for nucleic acid gel electrophoresis
• View an on-demand webinar covering these topics in more detail

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