Comments on SciPhu: Use of polyethylene glycol for drying polyacrylami...

Interesting that this idea of using PEG for stabil...

2009-10-16T14:24:03.859-07:00

Interesting that this idea of using PEG for stabilizing the gel during drying is being rediscovered. At least I think it is rediscovery after the paper by Wallevik and Jensenius in 1982 described the idea of drying PEG-treated gels between cellophane using a simple device, which can now be obtained from www.pateof.com - a most exclusive company in the direct service of scientists.
Yours etc
Jens C. Jensenius

None of the gels shown is worth drying. Too ugly/l...

2008-11-10T20:09:00.000-08:00

None of the gels shown is worth drying. Too ugly/low quality.

Nothing - no PEG, no glycerol - is needed to be added for gel drying without cracking! If you stain with conventional coomassie R-250, take the gel out of destaining solution (something like 7% acetate, 10% MeOH IIRC) and that's it. In 7 years doing this, I haven't had a single cracked gel.

That's for gels between 6 and 12.5%. Above that I imagine glycerol or PEG is beneficial.

You're in the Molecular and Cell Biology Carnival ...

2008-11-09T12:36:00.000-08:00

You're in the Molecular and Cell Biology Carnival -- here: http://skeptalchemist.blogspot.com/2008/11/molecular-and-cell-biology-carnival-4.html

Thank you for your post!

Hi,I am fixing my SDS-PAGE gels in 30% methanol / ...

2008-10-09T06:33:00.000-07:00

Hi,

I am fixing my SDS-PAGE gels in 30% methanol / 10% acid acetic for 30 min. Then I let my gels over night in 5% glycerol in water.

The next morning, I dry my gel at 55 degrees C for several hours, under vacuum : the most important is that there is a cooling system for removing the heat, or that there is a vacuum branched on relatively cold running tap water (vacuum).

The gels do crack if there is no cooling system with the vacum.

Good luck with your SDS-PAGE gels !

Daniel

I am sorry, we do not have any experience with PAG...

2008-08-29T00:57:00.000-07:00

I am sorry, we do not have any experience with PAG-film. We have seen gel shrinkage during drying though and this may cause disadhesion from the film. Please note that his has not been tested, and feel free to leave a comment if you are testing it yourself.

Do you know if the PEG will interfere with PAG fil...

2008-08-28T14:53:00.000-07:00

Do you know if the PEG will interfere with PAG film bonding?
If not, any thoughts?

The key to drying high % PA gels is to avoid stret...

2008-06-11T23:00:00.000-07:00

The key to drying high % PA gels is to avoid stretching them. Granted, it's been 20 years since I've had to dry a lot of gels for fluorography, but I routinely dried 15% Laemmlu gels, and 12% Bicine gels with nary a crack. If you are drying onto Whatman paper, slide the filter under the gel while it's in the ice water. Takes longer to dry as the filter sucks up water, but as long as the gel is fully dry (check to make sure it's as hot as the rest of the dryer) you're good to go.
Same goes for drying in dialysis membranes. Make sure there's a lot of water in the sandwhich and you're good to go. Gels crack when they are stretched while wet.

The problem with PEG is that it is often not pure....

2008-05-09T02:51:00.000-07:00

The problem with PEG is that it is often not pure. A solution of PEG of a particular molecular weight is in fact going to constitute of a lot of different molecular weights that is going to interfere with mass-spectroscopy. It may be possible to get around this by using mono-disperse PEGs. I.e. very high quality and high purity PEG’s with a unique chain length. Monodisperse PEG really increase reproducibility of assays as well. To my knowledge, there is only one company that provides monodisperse PEGs, Polypure AS (www.polypure.com).

I guess most people would ask if the PEG would int...

2008-05-08T15:01:00.000-07:00

I guess most people would ask if the PEG would interfere with down stream mass spectrometry analysis.