oozing gels

[Eric Kretschmer]

We had a four month stretch of gels constantly extruding from between 
our 377 plates (with genescan and sequencing software).  We finally 
fixed the problem by washing each of our plates with 125mL 3M HCl
after every run.  The HCl rinse is followed by a hot tap water and then a 
nanopure water rinse.  We also stopped using Alconox altogether. This 
advise came from our ABI rep. Greg Eichinger.  We tried skipping the HCl 
rinse between runs, and the extruding problem came back immediately.  We 
have run 35 gels over the last four and a half weeks without the extruding
problem resurfacing.
                              Eric