Cutting gels

If you are going to cut out the gel bands yourself from a gel, please follow carefully the following instructions:

• Clean the gel box or surface you are cutting the gel on/in with ethanol, isopropanol or methanol before the gel comes in contact with it.
• Use a clean razor/scalpel blade, and clean it further with ethanol, isopropanol or methanol before cutting.

• Handle and cut the gel in a laminar flow clean hood if one is available in your lab.
• Cut out a maximum of 10mm of a single gel lane for each sample you will be submitting -but-
• Don’t cut out unstained gel surrounding a band – cut tightly to the stained area.
• Slice the cut gel band into 1mm cubes, but no smaller.
• Place the sliced band into a high-quality Eppendorf microcentrifuge tube, which has been rinsed with 50% organic solvent and millipure water.
• Close the tube as soon as your bands are inside!