Video Lab Series: Gel Electrophoresis

The lab can be very prep-intense, but I thought I'd film this little video to help out as much as I can. It is a very valuable lab for Biology Students to get exposure to. This lab was performed with a group of other teachers at Stevenson University. Slides, video, and music were all created by me.

Gel electrophoresis is a method used in clinical chemistry to separate proteins by charge and or size (IEF agarose, essentially size independent) and in biochemistry and molecular biology to separate a mixed population of DNA and RNA fragments by length, to estimate the size of DNA and RNA fragments or to separate proteins by charge. Nucleic acid molecules are separated by applying an electric field to move the negatively charged molecules through an agarose matrix. Shorter molecules move faster and migrate farther than longer ones because shorter molecules migrate more easily through the pores of the gel.