DNA Gel Loading Dye Recipes

Agarose Gel Loading Dye Recipes (6x)

When considering which DNA loading dye to use it’s important to select a dye that won’t obscure your sample. i.e. If looking for a product expected to be ~300 bp, bromophenol blue will run with your sample and may obscure it. With 6x dye, load equivalent ratio of 5 µL dye to 25 µL sample.

Dye	0.5-1.5%	2.0-3.0%
Xylene cyanol	10k-4k bp	750-200 bp
Cresol red	2k-1k bp	200-125 bp
Bromophenol blue	500-400 bp	150-50 bp
Orange G	<100 bp
Tartrazine	<20 bp	<20 bp

Recipe 1:

0.25 g bromophenol blue
3 mL glycerol
7 mL H₂O

Recipe 2:

4 g sucrose
0.25 g bromophenol blue or xylene cyanol
QS with H₂O to 10 mL

Recipe 3:

60% v/v glycerol
20 mM Tris-HCL
60 mM EDTA
0.48% SDS
0.03% xylene cyanol
0.03% bromophenol blue
0.12% Orange G