Re: [DIYbio] Borax as a superior alternative to Tris

I have just been reading about Tris alternatives as it can be pretty expensive. My research turned up some surprising results. It seems that not only is Borax (Sodium boric acid) a substitute for Tris, it actually does the job better.

First I was reading about Tris-acetate-EDTA buffers and read this on the wikipedia page:

"Recently, Brody & Kern simplified electrophoretic buffers by substituting TBE and TAE buffers for a more efficient and inexpensive conductive media in gel systems.^[2]"

I thought this sounds interesting as I want to run gels for as cheap as possible and Tris is a hassle because I need to buy it from a scientific supplier. So I went to their article here. A quick summary of the article:

• Everyone uses Tris but only because everyone else uses it.
• It isn't particularly good at doing its job
• Since the widespread use of agar-gel electrophoresis, no real research has gone into improving the system

They test some other reagents and find that lowering the conductance of the gel and and buffer covering the gel and electrodes you can get better results. Also, Tris has problems because it conducts too well which heats the agar and solution. This causes it to be more conductive (if I understand correctly) and creates a feedback loop, giving you results which aren't that great. You can see this in the smile effect as the DNA runs further down the gel.

Their solution was to use Borax (Sodium boric acid). The wrote another report talking about the cost benefits and general principle. Then they patented it and set up a website, but you can just mix the buffers yourself from ingredients available at the supermarket. I found a quick recipe here. On the second page it has this recipe:

8g NaOH

45g Boric Acid

ad 1L H2O

(makes a 20x solution)

But this could possibly made even better by reducing the Na in the solution. Also, the above papers said that you don't really need EDTA either. The use of EDTA is kind of a left-over from RNA gels that persists in DNA gels for some reason.

Does anyone here work with Borax? It is readily available from the supermarket and I would be keen to hear of anyone else's experiences. Also, I have included some pics from the fasterbettermedia.com website:

SB Gel/buffer running a ladder.

This gel was made with a slightly different and slightly more expensive gel/buffer (Lithium boric acid). The above gel was run in 8mins @ 550V.

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