Section 8.4 - Nucleic Acid Detection and Quantitation in Electrophoretic Gels and Capillaries

Molecular Probes’ new generation of fluorescent nucleic acid gel stains — the SYBR Gold, SYBR Green I and SYBR Green II dyes — are by far the best high-sensitivity reagents for staining DNA (Figure 8.60) and RNA (Figure 8.61) in electrophoretic gels.1 These gel stains provide greater sensitivity with lower background fluorescence than the conventional gel stain, ethidium bromide. In addition, Ames testing performed by an independent laboratory has shown that SYBR Green I stain is significantly less mutagenic than ethidium bromide 2 (Figure 8.62).