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Isolation of nucleic acid from gel slices after electrophoresis is almost an obligatory step in molecular biological research. We developed a new kind of electroeluter which traps DNA in a channel plugged with agarose at both ends. The trap materials were concentrated salt solutions such as 10 M ammonium acetate. The rates of recovery of DNA fragments were 50% (40 kb),63% (3 kb),49% (420 bp), and 13% (50 bp) for the indicated fragments, respectively, recording the highest recovery of any size among existing tested systems in use. It took less than 30 min for elution regardless of size. This agarose-plugged electroeluter has overcome many of the problems associated with other electroelution systems, such as poor recovery, long elution time, or damage to DNA, while maintaining the flexibility of the electroelution, i.e. not limited by size or nature of molecules nor by the kind of gels. Because the system is essentially a chamber, the development of new trap material could enhance the performance or lead to a new application.
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