[DIYbio] Re: Any ideas on edible electrophoresis buffers?

Hi,

My two cents would be using PBS as buffer. You can both add it to the gel and use it as a running buffer. It has the salt (NaCl) and the buffering capacity (phosphate) you need, plus its edible. As Cathal suggested, be very careful with the chlorine gas produced during the electrophoresis. Chlorine is extremely reactive, and greatly damages the lungs upon inhalation.

Alternatively you could try phosphoric acid and phosphate as a buffer system, plus low amounts of table salt for conductivity.

Hope this helps,
Mat


On Thursday, 1 November 2012 08:53:56 UTC+1, Patrik D'haeseleer wrote:

So I got the idea of trying some jello shot electrophoresis for Science Hack Day this year. We won the judge's prize last year with a drinkable DNA extraction protocol, and this is my very transparent attempt at bribing the judges with booze (and a little science) again this year...

Turns out you can get some really nice results with food colors on a gel. And of course regular agarose or agar gel is edible. Problem is that damn Tris-borate EDTA buffer... First thing I thought of was to just replace the buffer with table salt, but that would likely just give you a lot of electrolysis, and Chlorine!

So... any idea what kinds of salts might be worth trying? Needs to be edible (of course), produce a well conducting solution, and not prone to producing toxic compounds by electrolysis.

I'm not looking for anything laboratory quality, mind you. Just looking for something that will allow me to electrophorese some bands of food coloring into a slab of agar, while still staying edible...

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