A simple method of drying polyacrylamide slab gels that eliminates cracking

The polyacrylamide slab gel is the most common gel format for analyzing protein samples by electrophoresis. Drying these gels is useful in many biological applications; for example, autoradiography, in which radiolabeled proteins are separated to enable their detection and identification. Dried protein gels can also serve as an ideal method of preserving the gel itself for permanent record-keeping and allowing densitometry at a convenient time. Here I describe a simple and highly reproducible gel-drying method that results in dried gels without the cracks that are frequently encountered with many existing gel-drying methods.