hot glass plates from acrylamide gels

[Timothy R Jackson]

has anybody experienced the following problem and managed to solve it...

we are using 6% denaturing acrylamide gels to separate pcr amplified 
microsatellites.  one of our primers are end-labelled with gamma 
33P-ATP.  after running our gels, we fix them in a 10% methanol, 10% 
acetic acid solution and then dry them.  we have recently found that when 
we remove our gel from fixer and lift it off of the glass plate, the 
glass plate that the gel was fixing on is radioactive in the same region 
as the amplified microsatellite locus.  in some cases the glass plate is 
hotter than the gel!!  this appears to be affecting the consistancy of 
our results as some glass plates get hotter than others and could be 
reducing the signal of our gel.  any solutions????

Tim Jackson
Dept. of Zoology
University of Guelph
Guelph, ON
Canada