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

Table salt is probably OK: you'd get chlorine gas, yes, but that's all
they add to tap water and it boils off pretty quickly. Besides, if
you're talking about eating the gel, the chlorine will get produced at
one of the terminals; it shouldn't make it to the gel in any worrying
quantity.

As for dyes, I encountered a paywalled paper suggesting that the primary
dye in turmeric (the name of which I have forgotten) worked as an
acceptable co-stain with an artificial counterion, but the counterion
wasn't edible. However, some quick hacking might find a suitably edible
counterion.

Of course, methylene blue is edible; there are some minor concerns about
carcinogenicity, but I get the impression that it's very minor; possibly
less significant than eating burnt toast. So if you stain and destain
properly, the Methylene Blue will be minimal and you'll get visible
bands if you use enough DNA.

Agarose itself is perfectly edible of course, and you don't need EDTA,
nor do you really need much buffering if it's just for culinary delight.
So, just enough salt to permit conduction, otherwise perhaps just water,
DNA and food-grade bromophenol blue/glycerol loading dye.

You may want to destain with something flavoursome to imbue a taste
other than bland salty gel. So, after running DNA, destain in salt-free
water first, then salt-free solution containing plenty of sweetener and
flavouring?

On 01/11/12 07:53, Patrik D'haeseleer wrote:
> So I got the idea of trying some jello shot electrophoresis for Science
> Hack Day <http://sf.sciencehackday.com/> this year. We won the judge's
> prize last year with a drinkable DNA extraction<http://www.instructables.com/id/DNAquiri-the-delicious-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<http://peer.tamu.edu/curriculum_modules/cell_Biology/Module_4/Electrophoresis%20on%20Agarose%20Gel%20-%20Student.ppt>.
> 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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