Description
Introduce your students to molecular biology with the Exploring Electrophoresis Single User Reagent Set with materials to teach how to pipette and how electrophoresis works.
First, students will develop pipetting skills with a 2-part hands-on activity in which they dial a pipette to a volume that corresponds to the amount identified on the pipette practice card, and then practice loading into a soft agar disk with wells, to simulate loading into an agarose gel.
Next, they will separate vibrant candy dyes to see how every day candy colors separate out on a gel, learning about molecular weight and charge’s effects on migration. Bring in inquiry by pouring a 9-well gel to test 3 other candies of your choice at the same time.
The next step is doing electrophoresis with actual DNA samples, and an analysis of the resulting DNA patterns. What better way to do this than helping conservation scientists identify which male whale is likely little Luna’s dad?
The single user reagent sets are pre-aliquoted for an individual workstation making it easy for you to open the pack and start your electrophoresis with even less prep, and include one bag of 2 – 200 µL micropipette tips. These activities require a MiniOne Electrophoresis System with p20 pipette (not included).
Single User Reagent Set Materials included for ONE workstation:
1 Gel Loading Practice Single User Reagent Set
- One Gel Loading Practice Agar Disk with Preformed Wells
- One Pipette Target
- One set of dye samples
1 Candy Color Electrophoresis Single User Reagent Set
- Candies in 6 colors
- One tube of dye Extraction Buffer
- Two Dye Extraction Tray
- One 1% Agarose Gel Cup
- One backup set of agarose gel cubes
- One tube of TBE Buffer, enough to make 135 mL of 1X running buffer
- One Laminated Gel Annotation and Photo Template card
1 DNA Fingerprinting Single User Reagent Set
- Five DNA samples
- One 1% agarose GreenGel™ Cup
- One backup set of agarose gel cubes
- One tube of TBE Buffer, enough to make 135 mL of 1X running buffer
Also included: one bag of 2 – 200 µL micropipette tips
