Gel Electrophoresis of RNA in Denaturing Formaldehyde Agarose Gels

Edwin M Southern, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Published online: July 2003

DOI: 10.1038/npg.els.0003780

Formaldehyde reacts with RNA, and when RNA is heated in the presence of formaldehyde all secondary structures are removed. Hence, gel electrophoresis of RNA in agarose gels containing formaldehyde provides a good denaturing gel system.

Keywords: denaturing; electrophoresis; RNA; agarose; formaldehyde

Figure 1. Submarine slab gel apparatus.
close
 References
    Bailey JM and Davidson N (1976) Methylmercury as a reversible denaturing agent for agarose gel electrophoresis. Analytical Biochemistry 70: 75.
    Fangman WL (1978) Separation of very large DNA molecules by gel electrophoresis. Nucleic Acids Research 5: 653.
    Gould HJ and Hamlyn PH (1973) The molecular weight of rabbit globin messenger RNAs. FEBS Letters 30: 301.
    book Jovin TM (1971) "Electrophoretic fractionation of oligodeoxyribonucleotides". In: Grossman L and Moldave K (eds) Methods in Enzymology, vol. 21; p.179. London: Academic Press.
    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.

Related Sub-Topics:

Techniques and Tools in Clinical Genetics | Techniques and Tools in Molecular Biology | Biochemical and Biophysical Techniques
Contact Editor close
Submit a note to the editor about this article by filling in the form below.

* Required Field

Article Title: Gel Electrophoresis of RNA in Denaturing Formaldehyde Agarose Gels
 
How to Cite close
Southern, Edwin M(Jul 2003) Gel Electrophoresis of RNA in Denaturing Formaldehyde Agarose Gels. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1038/npg.els.0003780]