Simple ethidium bromide question

[TJ Murphy]

Ethidium intercalates double-stranded nucleotides. This can be exploited
to discriminate between DNA-dependent and DNA-independent protein
interactions (PNAS  89:6958)

Pascal_Bochet wrote:

> Hello
> I was wondering why is it that in PCR when you look at the products on
> a
> agarose gel stained with ethidium bromide, you can see primer dimer if
> there is
> any but you cannot see single stranded primer (if for instance you
> omit TAQ or
> dNTP from the reaction.) Is it the size or the fact that it is single
> stranded
> ? In other terms what does ethidium bromide exactly bind to?
> Thank you for any insight.
> Pascal_Bochet at brown.edu