How to store PAGE gel and keep the bands after gel is run? - (Aug/10/2006 )

Does anyone have experience with this?

So our digital imaging system is down, for an unspecified time period...I am about to go on vacation...I have a gel (standard 12% PAGE) that I REALLY need to photograph. It has been sitting in water in the 4C for 9 days (since the imager went down). I will be gone for 10 days. is it OK to just leave it in the fridge? will the bands still show up after a total of about 3 weeks?

I am considering placing it in 1X running buffer...has anyone tried this before?

thanks for any replies

A

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hi i left my gel in water for about a month once when the gel doc was down. i could still see my bands at the end of it though they were a little fainter after that long. so i guess its ok.
soraya

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is it coomassie staining?
the safer would be to put it in acetic acid methanol again (the destaining solution).
This would not allow the proteins to diffuse, or am I wrong?

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actually, I guess I should have given more detail...it is stained with biosafe coomassie (biorad), the destain is only H2O.

thanks for answering! it looks like I should be OK, I got a nice whopping band...it's the fractions from a his-tag purification of a rProtein that may need to be published. I have thought that if it fades I can repeat the purification, although that would a pain. if I had known the doc system was going down, I would have saved the fractions and just repeated the gel at a later date

oh well

thanks again for the replies

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I think it should be OK.
It didn't become blurred for one week? so why would it disappear in one more week?
I would let it in water.

by the way, why don't you dry your precious gels?
you put your gel between two wet cellophane films. you can either dry with a vacuum heater (I don't like it for precious gels because you see plenty of dots, I mean the surface is not smooth anymore) or you can use a gel air drying system. My favorite.

http://www.bio-rad.com/B2B/BioRad/product/...vel=Lit+Request

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we have access to the owl drying system. however, no matter how carefully you soak it, sometimes they still curl and/or crack. I will look into the system you suggested, it seems much better.

I think another week or so probalby won't hurt it. I just wasn't sure if other people had tried it.

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We keep our gels (tris-glycine, tris-tricine, fixed and coomasie stained) in ddH2O at +4degC for months without any problems (no band diffusion).

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You may dry your gel on a whatmann paper and cover it with food wrap and put them in the drying system with a little heat.
Never curl and never crack.

Or call another institute or department...whether you can use their digital imaging system.

I hope this may help.

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tris tricine gels break.
so I use a drying solution.
3% glycerol and 10 % ethanol.
I soak the gel few minutes and wet the cellophane films in this solution.

If you soak the gel in this solution for long time, its size will reduce.

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1. occasionally you might get spots of fungal growth on the gel when left in water, or even in acetic acid.

2. i do the cellophane trick myself, and its excellent, also because once dried between the cellophane you can then photograph it later as well. moreover, some such specimens i use for my post graduate teaching programme and place them directly on top of the overhead projector fora full blown projection. one other thing, i don't use any dryer. i just clip it on the sides over a glass plate with binder clips.

i know i am late with this, and by now, aimikins should be getting back from his vacation. but nevertheless...

- viv

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