Ethidium Bromide and Agar Agar

[Matthew Zeits]

Read the comments, especially about the guy who did milk testing with Ethidium Bromide.  Wonder if we can do a purchase of the two stains they are talking about in this article:

http://www.labnews.co.uk/features/a-toxic-death-for-ethidium-bromide/

Also, from Jungle Jim's:

Hi, Matthew!

 

We sure do! We have Agar Agar available in yellow, green, red or white. Pricing may vary though typically ranges from $1.19 to $1.59 per package. We have several brands available, which can all be found in the Asian Aisles in the International Department. Sarap is currently our most popular brand.

 

If you'd like a little more information on our current selection, please feel free to give us a call at 513-674-6000 ext 7208. Our associates would love to help!

 

​Thanks for thinking of Jungle Jim's!

 

[Mike Horwath]

I use ethidium bromide in lab, but we have appropriate protective equipment, storage, waste disposal, etc.  I fully support using a non-toxic alternative dye for DIY!
There are multiple safe dyes available...SyberSafe, GelGreen, Nancy-520, etc.  We could do a cost comparison and then find out which companies would ship to Hive13.
I'm more skeptical of the use of Methylene blue (in the MacGuyver DNA article)...20ng detection limit is not that good, and it sounds much less specific for DNA.  In general DNA dyes are flat molecules that intercalate into the DNA, methylene-blue just has a positive/negative charge interaction.

As for Agar Agar:  sounds like fun for a demo project, but we will probably want to upgrade!  In terms of purity and uniform consistency, "agar agar" < agar < agarose.  For seeing nice crisp bands  you will probably want agarose.  It's kind of pricey, but fortunately you don't need much for a single gel...I often run 0.5%, 50mL agarose gels, so only 0.25g needed.
http://www.carolina.com/biotechnology-electrophoresis-reagents/agarose-25-g/217080.pr?catId=&mCat=&sCat=&ssCat=&question=agarose

There has been some discussion on the main DIYbio forums about purifying agar into agarose at home.  Seems like it's doable, not sure if it's worth the effort though.
https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!searchin/diybio/agarose/diybio/GQa1lxOI1mI/Vhw83K-5Mp4J
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/diybio/PX59ZCTg0qY