rehydrate dried gel - (Feb/26/2007 )

If I have run a standard acrylamide gel, stained and dried it between cellophane, is there a way to rehydrate the gel in one piece?

---

when you dried it, did you have glycerol in your final destain? this will help prevent cracking of the gel.

you can try soaking in destaining solution (you may absorb too much water and over-swell if you use plain water, the methanol in destaining solution will prevent this).

---

Actually, I haven't done it yet. I was planning ahead.

I should say, I will be silver staining these gels. After the stop/develop step, I'll wash 2x in ddH2O. So there isn't really a destaining step per se.

---

rehydrate in the SAME solution as it was dried - to prevent cracking; mild shaking is helpful; was it dried on Whatman paper? so there may be some rests of cellulose left...


if you are interested in destaining silver, use Farmer´s reagent

---

i recommend that you give a final soak in destaining solution (we use 30% methanol, 5% acetic acid) containing 5% glycerol. this will shrink your gel back to normal and permeate it with glycerol which will keep the gel supple after it is dried.

then, if you choose to rehydrate, you should rehydrate with destaining solution and it shouldn't crack or overswell.

---