Australia's Science Forum

Hi Everyone,
Has anyone made the gel for this bio prac. I made it a couple of times and it has not worked yet.
Can someone hepl please?
Nahrein

What prac is it that you are doing, need a bit more detail.

Hi Nahrein
For the gel we use 4g of agarose into 500mL of room temperature working buffer solution and stir for 2 mins in 1L beaker on electric stirrer. Then transfer to 2 500mL conical flasks and microwave for 1 min on high then swirl, repeat the 30 seconds on medium power, rest till 60 degrees. Pour untilinto gel trays that have been sealed at both ends. This makes 8 trays.
The buffer solution we buy in concentrated form from southern biological.
Krysia

Hi Krysia,
The teacher's recipe was 1% sol. using agar powder & tap water. Heat & stir until clear. Pour into mould with something in it to create wells & let it set. I thank you for your help.
Nahrein

there's another thread on this; see 'Electrophoresis Gel'

Hi guys we did this the other day in a butter container with food dyes and pens. I was really please with how well it worked so wanted to share my piccies.

Hi nickykinz! They look great! Do you use the same gel as for the DNA ones or is it just plain agar gel?

Great pictures, thank you. Do you just use alfoil for the contacts? As this looks simpler that what we do. Come to think of it our gel sits in a salt solution. You don't seem to have any, is that right?

It is off Brightminds but can't find the proper link for it at the moment. The link below takes you to a copy of the experiment though. Yes it is alfoil as the contacts. The agar is made with sodium bicarbonate buffer and then once it is set and you have put your samples in you pour the buffer over the top. It took a bit of fiddling to get the comb right as my butter container was a different size to theirs but once I had that it was easy.

http://labnetwest.asn.au/uploads/articl ... 150dpi.pdf

We also did this last year from the brightminds site. It worked really well too.

So do you use it in the DNA topic or the chromatography topic?

I think we used it for forensic chemistry for yr 12 option.

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/labs/gel/

This is the site for a GEL ELECTROPHORESIS VIRTUAL LAB. The virtual electrophoresis chamber explains the process really well. We do the home made version a couple of times a year and I have made a modified version which is a little more robust. I set it up as a demo and to save costs use power packs connected in series instead of expensive 9V batteries. As the home chamber takes a lesson to show good results we now have students work through the virtual version at the same time, makes the lesson a little less boring. The UTAH homepage has a lot of interesting, usable(?) stuff, worth having a browse and adding to library.
Have attached my version; note the Ferrero Roche container, so save them as well!
Note I have since substituted a comb made out of aluminium for the one i had made out of icy pol sticks, as i found the wood had a tendency to stick to gel when set.

That looks great! Much more professional than mine! We did it for 12Chem forensics also.

Looks great!!You should make them and sell them to us .

Re the comb, I just scooped out little wells with a spatula after the gel was set. This was the instruction from the prac book. The comb holes look more professional no doubt, but probably get the same result.

The comb holes don't just look professional they are functional tool, as it allows for the small strips of paper that has the dye on it to be inserted and remain (contained) in place without floating away.
Also if you have access to micro pippettes students can inject dyes into these wells and practice there technique.
Not hard to place comb in liquid and remove once gel has set, saves extra step of having to dig out little wells.

Just re read my post and before I get jumped on, I wasn't calling anyone a "tool", it was meant to read "they are functional too (as well).

hahahaha bunsen! I hadn't noticed I thought you had left out 'a' as in "they are a funtional tool" but reading it the other way "they are funtional, you tool!!" haha makes it very funny, even though you didn't mean it this way. Perhaps I am just way too sick of this job and would love to say this to some of my teachers!