Adding guanosine to your agarose?

[Paul N Hengen]

Recently someone wrote about adding guanosine to agarose for protecting
DNA from UV light when extracting it from the gel. The reference is

@article{Grundemann.Schomig1996,
author = "D. Gr\"{u}ndemann
     and E. Sch\"{o}mig",
title = "Protection of {DNA} during preparative agarose
gel electrophoresis against damage induced by ultraviolet light",
journal = "BioTechniques",
volume = "21",
number = "5",
pages = "898-903",
month = "nov",
comment = "use guanosine in the gel buffer;
dirk.gruendemann at urz.uni-heidelberg.de",
year = "1996"}

The article describes the use of 1-10 mM guanosine or cytidine added directly
to the gel to protect the DNA fro UV when slicing a DNA band from the gel over
a 300 nm transilluminator.  Has anyone tried this? What do you think?  The
study was only done using TAE buffered gels. Has anyone tried it with TBE
buffer?

--
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