staining a chargeless protein

[Bob Obar]

Dear Olin-
  How about staining the gel rather than the protein?  There are 
numerous reverse- or negative-staining methods about, but the one I 
use (and like  a whole lot for preparative purposes) is the zinc 
method of Fernandez-Patron et al. [Fernandez-Patron, C., 
Castellanos-Serra, L. and Rodriguez, P. (1992).  Reverse staining of
sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamidde gels by imidazole-zinc salts:
Sensitive detection of unmodified proteins.  Biotechniques 
12:564-573].  Best of luck.
--Bob
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The opinions expressed above are recent, are are unlikely to 
coincide with those of my employer.