Premixing gel solutions - (Nov/22/2012 )

Hi all,

Does anyone of you know what the shelf-life is of a premix of milliQ + Tris + SDS + acrylamide?

Since I am always using 12% acrylamide gels, I want to make a large volume of this premix so that I can just take the volume I need and only have to add APS and TEMED to cast a gel.

I think that it should work, but maybe anyone has experience with this? Are there any drawbacks?

Thanks!

Marjolein

The draw back is that the acrylamide tends to get oxidised and this results in the gels not setting properly. Commercial stock solutions of acrylamide usually contain some sort of antioxidant IIRC.

Ok, it is clear now:

I tested it with a small amount (for appr. 10 gels) but within a week my gels already started to get fuzzy!
And even worse: some of my proteins traveled even faster than the dye front, so they ran off the gel.

So gels should really be freshly prepared!

Thanks for your reply.