Gel Electrophoresis Tables | Thermo Fisher Scientific

Polyacrylamide gels

Recommended polyacrylamide % for separation in denaturing gels

% Acrylamide	Effective range of separation (nucleotides)
3.5	>500
5	151-500
10	61-150
15	30-60
20	<30

Dye migration in denaturing polyacrylamide gels

% Acrylamide	Xylene Cyanol (nucleotides)	Bromophenol Blue (nucleotides)
5	130	35
6	106	26
8	75	19
10	55	12
20	28	8

Adapted from Sambrook, J., Fritsch, E.F., and Maniatis, T. (1989) in: Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual, Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory.

Dye migration in nondenaturing polyacrylamide gels

% Acrylamide	Effective range of separation (bp)	Xylene Cyanol (nucleotides)	Bromophenol Blue (nucleotides)
3.5	100-1000	460	100
5	100-500	260	65
8	60-400	160	45
12	50-200	70	20
15	25-150	60	15
20	5-100	45	12

Adapted from Sambrook, J., Fritsch, E.F., and Maniatis, T. (1989) in: Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual, Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory.

Agarose gels

Recommended agarose percentage for size separation

% Agarose	Size fragments separated (bp)
0.5	1,000 to 30,000
0.7	800 to 12,000
1.0	500 to 10,000
1.2	400 to 7,000
1.5	200 to 3,000
3-4 (sieving agarose)	10 to 1,000

Adapted from Ausubel, F.M., Brent, R., Kingston, R.E., Moore, D.D., Seidman, J.G., Smith, J.A., Struhl, K. (1995) in "Current Protocols in Molecular Biology."

Gel electrophoresis resources

For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.