Repetitive use of polyacrylamide gels for the analysis and purification of oligonucleotides

Abstract

The repetitive use of polyacrylamide slab gels for the analysis of oligonucleotides by ultraviolet (UV) shadowing across the complete electrophoresis cassette is addressed. Visualization of the samples is possible by preparing the gel between a quartz plate and a highly sensitive glass fluorescent plate whose preparation is described here. Within a working day, gels can be reloaded up to five times with no detriment to the resolution of the oligonucleotide bands. Taking advantage of this detection approach, we also devised a strategy to reuse gels in the purification of oligonucleotides, combining electroelution and subsequent concentration of the samples using centrifugal filter units.