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Nucleic Acid Gel Stains

DNA Gel Stain

ABP Biosciences offers the nucleic acid gel stains GreenView™, GreenView™ Plus, GreenView™ Ultra, and RedView™, for pre- and post-gel staining, and SafeGreen™ and SafeRed™ loading dyes, for mixing with nucleic acids prior to electrophoresis. These stains are next-generation fluorescent nucleic acid gel stains designed to replace the highly mutagenic ethidium bromide (EB). These dyes are superior to EB by having a combination of high sensitivity, low toxicity, and great stability.

EB has been widely used for nucleic acid gel staining because of its low cost and generally sufficient sensitivity. However, EB is highly mutagenic. The safety hazard and costs associated with decontamination and waste disposal can ultimately make the dye expensive and inconvenient to use.


Advantages
 

  • Safer than EB. Shown by Ames test and other tests to be non-mutagentic and non-cytotoxic.
  • Stable at room temperature.
  • Compatible with standard blue LED and UV transilluminators.
  • Use with blue light reduces mutagenesis for gel excision and subsequent cloning.

Green_RedView Figure 1
Figure 1. Gel stain results with GreenView™, GreenView™ Plus, and GreenView™ Ultra (Left), and comparison results with SYBR Safe™ and GelGreen™ (Right). Left: Two-fold serial dilutions of a 1 kb DNA ladder (NEB, Cat # N0468S) were loaded onto each gel in 3 lanes in the amounts of 25 ng, 50 ng and 100 ng (left to right), then post-stained with GreenView™, GreenView™ Plus, and GreenView™ Ultra. Right: Results show GreenView™ has similar sensitivity with SYBR Safe™ and GelGreen™, GreenView™ Plus and GreenView™ Ultra have much better sensitivity.

Green_RedView Figure 1
Figure 2. Gel stain results with RedView™, and GelRed™. Two-fold serial dilutions of a 1 kb DNA ladder (NEB, Cat # N0468S) were loaded onto each gel in 3 lanes in the amounts of 25 ng, 50 ng and 100 ng (left to right), then post-stained with RedView™, and GelRed™, respectively. Results show RedView™ has similar sensitivity with GelRed™.

In addition to being safer than EB, GreenView™, GreenView™ Plus, and RedView™ show reduced cell permeability compared with SYBR Safe DNA gel stain, making them safer (Figure 3).

Green_RedView Figure 2
Figure 3. Cell permeability tests with SYBR Safe, GreenView, GreenView Plus, and RedView. Hela cells were incubated at 37ºC with 1X SYBR Safe, GreenView, GreenView Plus, and RedView for 30 min. GreenView Plus and RedView could not penetrate cell membranes to bind DNA in living cells, and were much safer than SYBR Safe, which rapidly entered cells and stained nuclei.

DNA Loading Dye

ABP Biosciences offers next-generation fluorescent nucleic acid gel stains SafeGreen™ and SafeRed™, which have extraordinary binding affinity to ensure the dye/DNA association remains stable during electrophoresis. Thus, samples can be prestained with SafeGreen™ or SafeRed™ before electrophoresis, thereby reducing the hazard inherent in handling large volumes of EB.


Advantages
 

  • Formulated in 6X loading buffer, ready to use.
  • Safer than EB.
  • Environmentally-friendly.
  • Easy to use.
  • Low cost.


SafeGreen™ and SafeRed™ are specially formulated in 6X DNA loading buffer, which contains two commonly-used tracking dyes: Xylene cyanol FF and bromophenol blue for monitoring the progress of the gel while it is running. Gels can be directly visualized under LED or UV light without any extra staining steps (Figure 4).

Green_RedView Figure 4
Figure 4. Gel staining results with SafeGreen™ and SafeRed™ premixed with DNA ladder. 1 kb DNA Ladder (Cat# D001) was mixed with SafeGreen™ or SafeRed™ at a 5:1 ratio, then loaded onto each well. Gels were directly imaged on a UV transilluminator.

SafeGreen™ and SafeRed™ are specially designed to be impermeable to cell membranes, thus reducing genotoxicity by preventing the dyes from entering live cells (Figure 5).

Green_RedView Figure 5
Figure 5. Cell permeability tests with SYBR Safe™, SafeGreen™, and SafeRed™. Hela cells were incubated at 37ºC with 1X SYBR Safe™, SafeGreen™, and SafeRed™ for 30 min. SafeGreen™ and SafeRed™ could not penetrate cell membranes to bind DNA in living cells, and were much safer than SYBR Safe™, which rapidly entered cells and stained nuclei.

To Order

Which DNA stain is right for you?
 

  GreenView GreenView Plus GreenView Ultra RedView
Sensitivity (dsDNA) Sensitive
(~2 ng)
Highly sensitive
(~0.2 ng)
Ultra sensitive
(~60 pg)
Sensitive
(~1 ng)
Nonhazardous/
Environmentally friendly
dsDNA
ssDNA    
RNA    
Precast gel staining  
Post-gel staining      
Gel band excision for cloning  
Excitation Source Blue light/UV Blue light/UV Blue light/UV UV
Recommended emission filter SYBR filter SYBR filter SYBR filter EB filter

 

DNA Gel Stains

Buy Cat. No. Product Name Description Size Price
N100 GreenView DNA Gel Stain non-toxic and non-mutagenic DNA gel stains 500 µl $75
N101 GreenView Plus DNA Gel Stain non-toxic and non-mutagenic DNA gel stains 500 µl $108
N103 GreenView Ultra DNA Gel Stain non-toxic and non-mutagenic DNA gel stains 500 µl $165
N102 RedView DNA Gel Stain non-toxic and non-mutagenic DNA gel stains 500 µl $108
D012 SafeGreen Loading Dye non-toxic and non-mutagenic DNA gel stains 1 ml $50
D013 SafeRed Loading Dye non-toxic and non-mutagenic DNA gel stains 1 ml $50
D001-1 1kb DNA Ladder DNA ladder 250 µl $40
D001-2 1kb DNA Ladder DNA ladder 2×250 µl $66
D002-1 1kb Plus DNA Ladder DNA ladder 250 µl $50
D002-2 1kb Plus DNA Ladder DNA ladder 2×250 µl $88
D003-1 100bp Plus DNA Ladder DNA ladder 250 µl $50
D003-2 100bp Plus DNA Ladder DNA ladder 2×250 µl $88
D016 DNA Loading Buffer (6X) DNA Loading Buffer 5 ml $22