Electroelution of nucleic acids from polyacrylamide gels: A custom-made, agarose-based electroeluter

Abstract Polyacrylamide electrophoresis is routinely used for small-scale preparative and analytical separations. The incomparably high-resolution separations achieved by this technique, however, have not been widely exploited to the large-scale preparative isolation of biological molecules from contaminants, mainly because of difficulties in the recovery of the desired molecule from the gel matrix. Electroelution is an effective procedure applied for this purpose. However, commercially available, high-cost electroeluters are required for achieving high recovery yields. Here, we describe a custom-made electroeluter that combines low-cost, high-recovery yields, short times of electroelution, and convenience in the manipulation of sensitive samples.