A simplified silver diammine method for the staining of nucleic acids in polyacrylamide gels

High sensitivity and low background, which are the significant features of the procedure of Johansson and Skoog (J. Biochem. Biophys. Methods. 1987, 14, (Suppl.) 33) for silver staining of nucleic acids in polyacrylamide gels, have been improved by excluding ethanol from all solutions and increasing the length of washing steps after sensitisation and staining. Including a fixation step before sensitisation increased the contrast of the bands even at high concentration of nucleic acid, producing a shift in the tone of colour from black to grey instead of gold to yellow bands. This technique is superior in terms of sensitivity and background to a number of other silver staining protocols, three which utilise silver diammine and three which utilise silver nitrate ions.