Electrophoresis Gel?

[tivol at tethys.ph.albany.edu]

In article <3ijn3a$abc at ixnews3.ix.netcom.com>,
Fegan1 at ix.netcom.com (Jim Fegan) writes:
[snip]
>	Does anyone know of a gel that would provide a suitable matrix 
>for the electrophoresis?  If you could email me any suggestions you 
>might have, I would greatly appreciate it.
>
Dear Jim,
	Polyacrylamide gels would work; however, there might not be any cost
savings and THE MONOMER IS VERY TOXIC.  Perhaps there is an agar which is
cheaper than agarose, and which would work.  I seem to recall that agarose is
just purified agar from which (mostly) ions have been removed.  For education
purposes, this may be satisfactory, or dialysis of the agar might yield a 
suitable form.  There is always paper electrophoresis, but I am not sure of
the relative costs of paper vs agarose.  Also, conceivably, a method could be
worked out to reuse the agarose gels by, e.g., applying a voltage across the 
flat sides of the gel rather than along them.  There are referrences about
removing the electrophoresed material from gels this way, but I don't know
them offhand.  Good luck.
				Yours,
				Bill Tivol