Non toxic gel staining for highschool student work - Agarose gel stains (Feb/03/2005 )

As part of our NSF grant we are supposed to put on a workshop for highschool students about biotechnology. My PI would like us to do PCR and run in out on gels, but wants it to be free of ethidium bromide.

Has anyone tried Blueview from Sigma, quite pricey but they say stains DNA and RNA, or methylene blue?

What options are out there?

Brian Gardunia

What DNA stains for agarose gels have you used besides Ethidium Bromide?

I am trying to prepare a module for highschool students that visit our lab, and have been instructed that Ethidium bromide is too dangerous for them, but not for us.

Anyway, What options are out there?

Sybergreen?

How could we stain with methylene Blue?

Brian

Hi
u can go for SRBR green gel stain for DNA on gels. its available with various vendors.
http://www.cambrex.com/Content/Documents/B...%2818110%29.pdf
but its safe and need a extra filter to view the bands, a bit xpensive tooo.
ciao

Hi,

Although SYBR green is less harmful then EtBr it is still toxic. I know that CSIRO Education in Australia runs demonstrations for Schools and they use methylene blue due to saftey concerns not only with the dyes but also the UV light needed to visulise stain. I am not connected with them and probably shouldn't be volonteering them! but you may be able to get some info from them????www.csiro.au