For a 30-year-old experimental method, gel electrophoresis remains popular. Originally devised as a method to extract nucleic acids from solution, it has evolved into a method for the analysis of everything from protein expression to matching RNA expression to proteins. "When we opened this facility three years ago, some people told me that in three years you won't do gel electrophoresis any more, so why invest in the equipment?" says Thomas Franz, head of the proteomics core facility at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany. "Instead we've had an increase in demand of gel electrophoresis of 100% every year for the last three years."