Thursday, September 24, 2009

Separation of DNA Fragments Using PAGE Method

This method is able to separate DNA fragments with the size of as small as 10 bp and up to 1 kb with the resolution of as little as 1 bp. While agarose gel electrophoresis is only able to separate DNA fragments with the bigger size that PAGE does or in the size range of 100 nucleotides to around 10 – 15 kb.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis: Advantages and Disadvantages

You must have known that agarose gel electrophoresis is generally adequate for resolving nucleic acid fragments in the size range of 100 nucleotides to around 10-15 kb. But, for nucleic acid which its fragments below those range, it will be difficult to separate and hard to visualize because of diffusion within the gel matrix. These problems are solved by native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE). Using native PAGE, fragments as small as 10 bp and up to 1 kb can be separated with a resolution of as little as 1 bp.