Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 15, 2026

DNA Electrophoresis Using Thiazole Orange Instead of Ethidium Bromide or Alternative Dyes
Published on: March 31, 2019
A shortcut organic dye-based staining method for the detection of DNA both in agarose and polyacrylamide gel
Weitao Cong1, Mao Chen, Zhongxin Zhu
1Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Biopharmaceuticals, Wenzhou Medical College, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Abstract:
In this study, we describe a brief, sensitive and safe organic dye-based staining method for the visualization of DNA both in agarose and polyacrylamide gels by using Victoria Pure Blue BO (VPBBO). Down to 0.8-1.6 ng of λ DNA/HindIII markers in agarose gels and 0.4-0.8 ng of pUC18 DNA/Mspl markers in polyacrylamide gels can be successfully detected within 15 and 10 min by the new developed technique, respectively. Moreover, the mechanism of the VPBBO staining was investigated and further confirmed by electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) and molecular docking. The results indicated that the interaction between VPBBO and DNA is mainly due to groove binding.
Related Concept Videos
DNA Agarose Gel Electrophoresis
Gel extraction follows five major steps: running gel electrophoresis to separate fragments, isolating the individual bands, extracting DNA from those bands, and removing the dye and salts from the extracted mixture to obtain pure DNA.
In cloning experiments, both the insert and vector DNA...
Southern Blot
Denatured DNA fragments must be transferred onto a carrier membrane from the gel to make it accessible to a probe - a small ssDNA fragment complementary to the target DNA...
Two-dimensional Gel Electrophoresis
The first dimension separation uses the isoelectric focusing or IEF technique performed on immobilized pH gradient (IPG) strips that separate proteins according to their isoelectric points.
Biological samples, such as cells...
Labeling DNA Probes
Radioisotopes, fluorophores, or small molecule binding partners like biotin or digoxigenin, are the most widely used reporter tags for labeling DNA probes. These labels can be attached to the probe DNA molecule via...
DNA Isolation
SDS-PAGE
A variation of gel electrophoresis, termed polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE), is commonly used for separating proteins according to their molecular size by passing them through a polyacrylamide gel. Because of the varying charges associated with amino acid side chains, PAGE can be used to separate intact proteins...

