Electrophoresis
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UV Transilluminator
A transilluminator is used to read the agarose gel plates once electrophoresing is complete. UV light is passed thru the plate to allow visualization of bands. Transilluminators are made of stainless steel with a transparent cover composed of acrylic UV blocking material to protect the user from UV radiation.
Power Supply
A power supply that will be capable of providing roughly 100 amps of power for approximately one to one and a half hours is necessary to perform gel electrophoresis.
Electrophoresing Chamber
Electrophoresing chambers come in various sizes and are made of clear plastic. They can run as few as 6 samples and as many as 48 samples at a time. There are some versions available in which two plates may be stacked on top of each other and run at the same time.
DNA Capillary Sequencer
While a capillary DNA analyzer may be significantly more expensive than the traditional slab gel technique of electrophoresis, it is ideal for high throughput sequencing.
References
Text – http://web.utk.edu/~khughes/GEL/sld001.htm
Text – http://www.abrf.org/JBT/1999/September99/sep99mardis.html
Text – http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animations/content/gelelectrophoresis.html
Images – http://joagene.com/tag/UV?TSSESSION=135b375144aac06b2ce9022079e38c73
Images – http://pages.usherbrooke.ca/dgarant/DG%20eng/lab_infrastructure.htm
Images – http://www.ecs.umass.edu/eve/facilities/micro.html
Images – http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/dnacore/sdsu_dnacore.html
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Extraction is the technique of removing nucleic acids (DNA and/or RNA) from surrounding cellular material and is the first step before subsequent molecular analysis.
Click here to learn about extraction equipment.
Electrophoresis allows DNA, RNA and protein fragments to be separated by size as they move through a charged gel matrix. It uses a charge delivered by a power supply of approximately 100 amps to separate molecules by their charge to mass ratio. Few pieces of equipment are necessary to perform slab gel electrophoresis. All pieces of equipment are quite small, fit on the bench top, are relatively inexpensive and are made by many manufacturers. An alternative to slab gel electrophoresis which also separates proteins or small nucleic acids by size ratio is gel capillary electrophoresis. Using a gel capillary electrophoresis instrument, only minimal amounts of DNA are needed as compared to the slab gel technique. The capillary electrophoresis instrument can also use alternate separation methods, such as dye terminator sequencing.
Click here to learn more about electrophoresis methods.
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References
- Text – http://web.utk.edu/~khughes/GEL/sld001.htm
- Text – http://www.abrf.org/JBT/1999/September99/sep99mardis.html
- Text – http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animations/content/gelelectrophoresis.html
- Images – http://joagene.com/tag/UV?TSSESSION=135b375144aac06b2ce9022079e38c73
- Images – http://pages.usherbrooke.ca/dgarant/DG%20eng/lab_infrastructure.htm
- Images – http://www.ecs.umass.edu/eve/facilities/micro.html
- Images – http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/dnacore/sdsu_dnacore.html