An improved silver stain for the visualization of lipopolysaccharides on polyacrylamide gels.

A sensitive, brief, and user-friendly silver stain to meet the needs in high-efficiency detection of lipopolysaccharides (LPS) on polyacrylamide gels is described. In this study, the most commonly used formaldehyde-based LPS silver stain, which is potentially hazardous to the operator, is replaced by ascorbic acid (Vc) in alkaline sodium thiosulfate solution. It takes only about 35 min to complete all the protocol, with a detection limit of 4 ng of total LPS. The results indicate that this user-friendly method could be a good choice for LPS visualization on polyacrylamide gels.

An expanding negative detection method for the visualization of DNA in polyacrylamide gels by eosin Y.

A sensitive and easy technique has been developed for the negative detection of DNA following PAGE using eosin Y. After electrophoresis, gels are fixed and stained within 40 min to provide a detection limit of 0.1-0.2 ng of single DNA band, which appears as transparent and colorless under the opaque gel matrix background. The sensitivity of the new stain is fourfold better than zinc-imidazole negative and ethidium bromide stains. Furthermore, the newly developed staining method has been successfully applied to RNA visualization in polyacrylamide gels. In addition, the inclusion of inorganic salts in staining solution was also investigated, which has great effect on the staining efficiency.