Great Ethidium Bromide Alternative

May 19, 2017

Universite de Montreal
Neurocience
Research associate

Overall

Quality of Results

Ease-of-Optimization

What do these ratings mean?
Write a Review

Company:

Denville

Product Name:

GreenGlo

Catalog Number:

CA3600-SA

This non-mutagenic alternative can be used exactly as EtBr and appears to have the same sensitivity.

Experimental Design and Results Summary

Application

DNA staining in agarose gel

Starting Material

20,000X dye solution in water and agarose gel

Protocol Overview

1. Melt your agarose as usual (TAE is recommended as buffer)
2. Wait for the agarose to cool to 55C (until you can hold the flask with your gloves for a while w/o getting burned)
3. Add 5 ul/100 ml
4. Pour the gel (not more than 0.5 cm deep, wich is the usual anyway)

Tips

the only difference with EtBr: don't add to the hot agarose, wait for it to cool

Results Summary

I mixed the GreenGlo with the agarose, poured and loaded the gel. After the 20 min run of my genotyping PCR I proceeded to imaging in an old image-doc, as usual. To my eye, the sensitivity was as with EtBr (see pic)

DOI or PMID #

N/A

Additional Notes

This review is from a free sample. You probably can get one too.

Image Gallery

Summary

The Good

After testing other EtBr alternatives, this is great because you don't need to add it to the running buffer and you don't need special imaging equipment. In addition, even the concentration is the same one normally uses for EtBr.

The Bad

More expensive than EtBr (for aprox $1/ 100 ml gel) and shelf life: 1 year

The Bottom Line

The environmentally friendly alternative as convenient and efficient as EtBr. My lab equipment is already contaminated, but I think it will slowly get clean. In the meantime, I still dispose of everything in special containers.

Join the discussion