Ghost band (was Re: How to get a single stranded DNA as long as 2-3kb?)

[Tom Anderson]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2007, peter wrote:

> On Jun 12, 5:31 pm, "Jose de las Heras" <jose... from tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
> > "peter" <peter.ianak... from gmail.com> wrote in message
> >
> > news:1181593924.822581.168770 from q75g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > > On Jun 11, 4:22 pm, Nick Theodorakis <nick_theodora... from hotmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > >> ChenHA wrote:
> > >>
> > >> > Perhaps I misremember, was it XL1 blue cells that produces the
> > >> > ghost band of ssDNA instead?
> > >>
> > >> I seem to remember a discussion about NaOH irreversibly altering
> > >> the plasmid conformation to generate a ghost band during alkaline
> > >> preps,
> > >
> > > There is no such thing like "ghost" bands.
> >
> > actually, "ghost" bands do exist.
> >
> > They do seem to be related to a change in conformation of the plasmid
> > DNA under alkaline conditions. I remember vaguely an old paper, from
> > the 70s, describing what conformation circular DNA can take, and it
> > was defined as "type V" DNA, or something like that...
>
> Jose, Why do you think I should believe to a paper from the 70s?  Do you
> know how many crappy papers were published in the past that are pure BS
> when we look at retrospect....

Significantly fewer than the number of crappy papers published recently
that are pure BS when you look at them.

But Peter, if you choose to ignore all papers from the 70s and earlier on
principle, that's fine by me, because you're one less potential competitor
i have to worry about.

tom

-- 
Tom Anderson, MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, UCL, London WC1E 6BT
(t) +44 (20) 76797264   (f) +44 (20) 76797805   (e) thomas.anderson from ucl.ac.uk