How to read, interpret and analyze DNA gel electrophoresis results?

Gel electrophoresis is a laboratory method used to separate mixtures of DNA, RNA, or proteins according to molecular size. In gel electrophoresis, the molecules to be separated are pushed by an electrical field through a gel that contains small pores. Did you treat your extracted DNA with RNAse? after treating your sample DNA with RNase you might find a good quality and bright band of DNA. I would also recommend to run Ladder according to your DNA size. The band of high molecular weight dna has moved quite a long way from the well .This combined with a smear of dna/rna at lower molecular weight indicates that there is quite a lot of degradation of your dna sample. Even so, as most of your DNA is quite long, if the next stage of your process is a pcr then the DNA will be fine for pcr because a little degradation will not cause a pcr to fail. #dna #gelelectrophoresis #genetics #pcr #biology