New DNA stain

[Glen Shearer]

Robert Hindges (hindges at vetbio.unizh.ch) wrote:
: Hi Netters

: Recently I have seen a picture of a agarose gel, where the DNA was stained
: with a substance called SybrGreen. It is not toxic and it only stains the
: DNA, not the gel, therefore it is much nicer to work with than with EtBr. 
: Does anybody knows more about this stain, i.e. where to buy or how much it
: costs?

We've used SybrGreen.  Its an interesting dye...
Essentially no background thus no need to destain.
If you use shortwave UV _on top_ of the gel (epi-illumination)
it is quite a bit more sensitive than EtBr.

The down side is that it is expensive.  (About $200/ml)
But as I recall, the working dilution is 1/5,000 or something
in this neighborhood, and it can be reused for a week or so.

Also, I'm not aware that there is any good toxicity or mutagenicity
data available.  Are you sure that it is 'non-toxic'?

Regards,
Glen

[just a customer]