You can run the perfect agarose gel to separate your nucleic acid fragments but if you don’t stain and image the gel properly, it’s all for not. 

In this second installment of Mol Bio Minutes we take a look at the staining considerations for nucleic acid gel electrophoresis with Paulius Palaima, Product Manager at Thermo Fisher Scientific. He covers the range of stains and staining approaches available while calling out pros, cons and considerations for each. How these recommendations change, depending on your sample, is also covered in this approachable but informative episode. 

Helpful resource links mentioned in this episode:

• A helpful DNA stain selection guide
• RNA stain options and details
• Effects of dyes on gel electrophoresis properties

Subscribe to get future episodes as they drop and if you like what you’re hearing we hope you’ll share a review or recommend the series to a colleague. 

Visit the Invitrogen School of Molecular Biology to access helpful molecular biology resources and educational content, and please share this resource with anyone you know working in molecular biology. 

For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.