Agarose
Agarose Powder Electrophoresis Grade Molecular Biology | Agarose
Agarose powder is a linear polysaccharide that forms a gel when it is mixed with water. This chemical is actually found naturally in agar. Agar can be extracted from the cell walls of red algae. When agar is kept in its original state, it is often used for growing bacteria, virus, plant and other types of cells. The low melting temperature of agar makes it ideal for these applications because of the inability of cells to deteriorate it. Many laboratories utilize agar including clinical, pharmaceutical development and environmental.
There are several different laboratory methods that use agarose gel including separating DNA, RNA and protein, diagnosing diseases that affect the immune system, and collecting information on a sample that contains unknown properties. Agarose gel and powder is commonly found in microbiology, biochemistry, genetics and forensics laboratories. The chemical also has several interesting characteristics that make it unique. Because of agarose’s simple structure, it is ideal for separating and characterizing proteins. It also has large pores which allow proteins to easily pass through the chemical’s structure.