Nucleic Acid Gel Stains

SPEED Biosystems has a collection of nucleic acid gel stains, including GreenView™, GreenView™ Plus, GreenView™ Ultra, and RedView™ for pre- and post-gel staining, and SafeGreen™ and SafeRed™ loading dyes, for mixing with nucleic acids prior to electrophoresis. These stains are next-generation fluorescent nucleic acid gel stains designed to replace the highly mutagenic ethidium bromide (EB). These dyes are superior to EB by having a combination of high sensitivity, low toxicity, and great stability. EB has been widely used for nucleic acid gel staining because of its low cost and generally sufficient sensitivity. However, EB is highly mutagenic. The safety hazard and costs associated with decontamination and waste disposal can ultimately make the dye expensive and inconvenient to use.

Gel Stains for Pre- and Post-gel Staining (GreenView™, GreenView™ Plus, GreenView™ Ultra, and RedView™)

Advantages

★ Safer than EB. Shown by Ames test and other tests to be non-mutagentic and non-cytotoxic.

★ Stable at room temperature.

★ Compatible with standard blue LED and UV transilluminators.

★ Use with blue light reduces mutagenesis for gel excision and subsequent cloning.

Figure 1. Gel stain results with GreenView™, GreenView™ Plus, and GreenView™ Ultra (Left), and comparison results with SYBR Safe™ and GelGreen™ (Right). Left: Two-fold serial dilutions of a 1 kb DNA ladder (NEB, Cat # N0468S) were loaded onto each gel in 3 lanes in the amounts of 25 ng, 50 ng and 100 ng (left to right), then post-stained with GreenView™, GreenView™ Plus, and GreenView™ Ultra. Right: Results show GreenView™ has similar sensitivity with SYBR Safe™ and GelGreen™, GreenView™ Plus and GreenView™ Ultra have much better sensitivity.

Figure 2. Gel stain results with RedView™, and GelRed™. Two-fold serial dilutions of a 1 kb DNA ladder were loaded onto each gel in 3 lanes in the amounts of 25 ng, 50 ng and 100 ng (left to right), then post-stained with RedView™, and GelRed™, respectively. Results show RedView™ has similar sensitivity with GelRed™.

In addition to being safer than EB, GreenView™, GreenView™ Plus, and RedView™ show reduced cell permeability compared with SYBR Safe DNA gel stain, making them safer (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Cell permeability tests with SYBR Safe, GreenView, GreenView Plus, and RedView. Hela cells were incubated at 37? with 1X SYBR Safe, GreenView, GreenView Plus, and RedView for 30 min.

GreenView Plus and RedView could not penetrate cell membranes to bind DNA in living cells, and were much safer than SYBR Safe, which rapidly entered cells and stained nuclei.

How to choose the DNA stain that is right for you?

Gel Loading Dyes (SafeGreen™ and SafeRed™)

Advantages

★ Formulated in 6X loading buffer, ready to use.

★ Safe and non-toxic, a perfect replacement to EB.

Figure 4. Gel staining results with SafeGreen™ (left) and SafeRed™ (right) premixed with DNA ladder.

SafeGreen™ and SafeRed™ are specially designed to be impermeable to cell membranes, thus reducing genotoxicity by preventing the dyes from entering live cells (Figure 5)

Figure 5. Cell permeability tests with SYBR Safe™, SafeGreen™, and SafeRed™. Hela cells were incubated at 37ºC with 1X SYBR Safe™, SafeGreen™, and SafeRed™ for 30 min. SafeGreen™ and SafeRed™ could not penetrate cell membranes to bind DNA in living cells, and were much safer than SYBR Safe™, which rapidly entered cells and stained nuclei.