Denaturing Gel Electrophoresis of RNA and DNA Using Urea–Polyacrylamide Gels

Edwin M Southern, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Published online: October 2002

DOI: 10.1038/npg.els.0003778

At high concentrations, urea is able to denature both DNA and RNA and polyacrylamide gels containing urea at 7 mol L–1 can be used to separate nucleic acids under denaturing conditions.

Keywords: RNA; DNA; electrophoresis; urea–polyacrylamide

Figure 1. Slab electrophoresis apparatus.
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 References
    Gould HJ and Hamlyn PH (1973) The molecular weight of rabbit globin messenger RNAs. FEBS Letters 30: 301.
    Jovin TM (1971) Electrophoretic fractionation of oligodeoxyribonucleotides. Methods in Enzymology 21: 179.
    Maniatis T, Jeffrey A and van de Sande HV (1975) Chain length determination of small double- and single-stranded DNA molecules by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Biochemistry 14: 3787.
 Further Reading
    Fangman WL (1978) Separation of very large DNA molecules by gel electrophoresis. Nucleic Acids Research 5: 653.

Related Sub-Topics:

Techniques and Tools in Clinical Genetics | Techniques and Tools in Molecular Biology | Biochemical and Biophysical Techniques
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Article Title: Denaturing Gel Electrophoresis of RNA and DNA Using Urea–Polyacrylamide Gels
 
How to Cite close
Southern, Edwin M(Oct 2002) Denaturing Gel Electrophoresis of RNA and DNA Using Urea–Polyacrylamide Gels. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1038/npg.els.0003778]