title: Noninvasive imaging of nanogram quantities of DNA in agarose electrophoresis gels.
abstract: Image processing techniques which separate the DNA Kerr effect and induced electrokinetic distortion contributions to electric birefringence images of agarose nucleic acid electrophoresis gels are described. Under standard electrophoresis conditions, detection limits of 10 ng of DNA per well are obtained in hydroxyethylated agarose without signal averaging or 7.5 ng with averaging of four measurements. Maintaining constant gel temperature is shown to improve the quality of the images. Monochromatic light (589 nm) is shown to give a small increase in sensitivity compared to polychromatic (650 +/- 20 nm) light.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109-1055.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lanan
authors.forename: D W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Grossmann
authors.forename: M D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Morris
mesh_terms: D004247:DNA / Q000032:analysis*; D004587:Electrophoresis, Agar Gel; D008832:Microchemistry
chemical_list: D004247:DNA