Adios to Agarose

Resolution of OligoPrep (left) versus standard agarose (right).

OligoPrep^TM Synthetic Meltable Gel Matrix From National Diagnostics Imagine that purification of DNA or protein fragments was unnecessary. Imagine an agarose gel that remains liquefied at room temperature after melting. Well, imagine no more. National Diagnostics (Atlanta, Ga.) has developed OligoPrep^TM, a synthetic meltable gel matrix intended as an agarose replacement for the separation, purification, and recovery of DNA, PCR products, and proteins. OligoPrep can be used to separate double-stranded DNA fragments from 5 to 3,000 bp; it can also separate proteins from 8 to 220 kD. Usable samples are obtained immediately by excising and melting the relevant gel sections.

OligoPrep "saves our lab a day and a half, almost two days," acknowledges William Vorachek, research associate at the University of Pittsburgh. In the lab of Joseph Walker, Vorachek uses OligoPrep to sequence PCR purified DNA. "[Before] we had...