Gel Electrophoresis

One of the most common forms of electrophoresis that students use is slab gel electrophoresis. In a slab gel, he conducting buffer is retained within a porous gel of agarose or polyacrylamide. Slabs are formed by pouring the gel between two glass plates separated by spacers. Typical thicknesses are 0.25–1 mm. Gel electrophoresis is an important technique in biochemistry where it is frequently used for separating DNA fragments and proteins. Although it is a powerful tool for the qualitative analysis of complex mixtures, it is less useful for quantitative work. Gel electrophoresis is commonly used in biochemistry to separate macromolecules, nucleic acids and proteins. Proteins and nucleic acid fragments are separated by differences in mobility through a sieving gel under the force of an applied electric field. An Example of a gel can be seen in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1: Schematic of a standard gel electrophoresis set-up. The travels in the direction of the arrow