Gel Electrophoresis Tables | Thermo Fisher Scientific

Polyacrylamide Gels

Recommended Polyacrylamide % for Separation in Denaturing Gels

% Acrylamide	Effective Range of Separation (nucleotides)
3.5	>500
5	151-500
10	61-150
15	30-60
20	<30

Dye Migration in Denaturing Polyacrylamide Gels

% Acrylamide	Xylene Cyanol (nucleotides)	Bromophenol Blue (nucleotides)
5	130	35
6	106	26
8	75	19
10	55	12
20	28	8

Adapted from Sambrook, J., Fritsch, E.F., and Maniatis, T. (1989) in: Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual, Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory.

Dye Migration in Nondenaturing Polyacrylamide Gels

% Acrylamide	Effective Range of Separation (bp)	Xylene Cyanol (nucleotides)	Bromophenol Blue (nucleotides)
3.5	100-1000	460	100
5	100-500	260	65
8	60-400	160	45
12	50-200	70	20
15	25-150	60	15
20	5-100	45	12

Adapted from Sambrook, J., Fritsch, E.F., and Maniatis, T. (1989) in: Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual, Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory.

Agarose Gels

Recommended Agarose Percentage for Size Separation

% Agarose	Size Fragments Separated (bp)
0.5	1,000 to 30,000
0.7	800 to 12,000
1.0	500 to 10,000
1.2	400 to 7,000
1.5	200 to 3,000
3-4 (sieving agarose)	10 to 1,000

Adapted from Ausubel, F.M., Brent, R., Kingston, R.E., Moore, D.D., Seidman, J.G., Smith, J.A., Struhl, K. (1995) in "Current Protocols in Molecular Biology."