Bio-Rad’s Ready Gel® precast polyacrylamide gels are designed to fit the Bio-Rad Mini PROTEAN 3 electrophoresis cell (or the discontinued Mini-PROTEAN II system) as well as the Mini Trans-Blot transfer system. The gels arrive virtually ready to run and are available in a variety of single-percentages as well as gradients, with several different numbers and sizes of wells to choose from.
Ready Gels® are available in six different formulations for a variety of applications: Tris-HCl, Tris-Tricine, IEF, Zymogram, TBE, and TBE-Urea. I have only used the Tris-HCl gels, and have found them to be generally good. After opening the package, the gels are ready to be loaded into the buffer tank after making a simple cut across the bottom of the gel and removing a strip of tape. The wells also need to be rinsed out before use, which can be done either before or after loading into the buffer tank. The gels have a shelf life of approximately 3 months, and can be ordered individually if you don’t run gels that often.
One definite problem with these gels is that they sometimes arrive with one or more mis-shaped wells. This seems to happen more frequently in the winter, perhaps due to the freezing of gels during shipping. On the one occasion where an entire box of 10 gels was in this condition, Bio-Rad was very good about sending new gels at no cost once I called them. If your sample volume is close to the maximum volume of the well, the partially obstructed wells cause your sample to spill over into neighboring lanes. To solve this problem I am able to prepare my samples so that I only need to load about two thirds of the maximum volume, although this is not always possible in all electrophoresis applications.
A benefit of the Ready Gels® is that they eliminate exposure to toxic, unpolymerized acrylamide. Gradient Ready Gels® are especially attractive because pouring gradient gels by hand is a difficult process that requires a gradient mixer. Both single-percentage and gradient gels cost $9 each. At this price they are not prohibitively expensive, although if I am using several single-percentage gels at once I do pour my own.
Allison Curley
Research Assistant
Colgate University
Neuroscience