Re: [DIYbio] Gel Red questions

SYBR Safe and Thiazole Orange are very similar, but not identical.  So is Thiazole Orange an acceptable substitute for the more expensive SYBR Safe in gel staining?  If so, why isn't everyone using it?

Thiazole Orange is membrane-permeable.  It was first developed to label RNA in intact reticulocytes.  I'm pretty sure that Thiazole Orange also binds DNA.  All DNA intercalating dyes are suspected carcinogens, for obvious reasons.

One way that SYBR Safe might be "safer" than Thiazole Orange is if the former was membrane-impermeant.  Is it?  I doubt it.  If anything, I would expect SYBR Safe to be slightly more membrane-permeant, because SYBR Safe has a propyl group where Thiazole Orange has a methyl group.  However, that structural change might also reduce toxicity.

I just had a look at an MSDS for each compound, and I didn't see any obvious differences.  

On Thursday, April 27, 2017 at 1:49:25 PM UTC-7, Dennis Oleksyuk wrote:

It is much cheaper here if you buy 5G at a time.

http://www.adipogen.com/cdx-t0013/thiazol-orange.html

On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 5:06 PM Mega [Andreas Stuermer] <masters...@gmail.com> wrote:

So are there cheaper sources?

http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sial/390062?lang=de&region=AT 

Like this

On Sunday, April 23, 2017 at 10:03:09 PM UTC+2, John Ladasky wrote:

On Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at 12:03:42 PM UTC-7, Nathan McCorkle wrote:

Yeah, that's why big companies and universities don't switch.

EtBr is molecularly known (no one really knows exactly what the gelRed
and sybrSafe molecules are, we know what classes they're in or one
that was described in one patent, etc)

I'm pretty sure that this information cannot be kept secret.  To obtain a chemistry patent, and to publish an accurate MSDS, the structure of the novel active compound must be known and disclosed.

I remember that SybrSafe is in the cyanine dye family, a descendant of Thiazole Orange.  If you look at the Wikipedia article for SybrSafe, a structure is published, and it sure looks like a cyanine dye to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SYBR_Safe

 

Wikipedia entries are also available for GelGreen and GelRed.  They look like acridine orange and ethidium dimers, respectively, with a peptide-ether linker between the individual fluorophores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GelGreen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GelRed

The idea of making ethidium dimers is not new.  An ethidium dimer was available in 1990.  It's still available.  The linker differs from the GelRed linker, but otherwise the two molecules are quite similar.

https://www.thermofisher.com/order/catalog/product/E1169

--
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups DIYbio group. To post to this group, send email to diy...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to diybio+un...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/diybio?hl=en
Learn more at www.diybio.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DIYbio" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to diybio+un...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to diy...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/diybio.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/57d4e13f-26d1-4d00-9b54-c4e441661396%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.