Polyacrylamide and Agarose Gel Electrophoresis Using
Muscle Protein
Name: Alicia
Nelson
Class: BE 210
The purpose of this experiment is to determine whether an agarose gel or a polyacrylamide gel most accurately stains muscular proteins. Accurate will be defined as: if a significant difference exists in the average protein concentration of a specifically identified protein, then the gel with the higher concentration will be concluded more accurate for staining muscular proteins (assuming both gels are initially loaded with the same concentration of protein, discussed later). The hypothesis of this experiment is if both polyacrylamide and agarose gels are loaded with the same concentration of proteins, then the proteins in the agarose gel will have a significantly higher (more accurate) concentration due to the ability of the staining dye to bind to more proteins. The percent of polyacrylamide used for this experiment will be 4-15%, whereas the percent of agarose used will be 10%. While both of these percents are optimal for the size of proteins to be loaded, a more dense concentration of polyacrylamide in parts of the gel will be used. Therefore, the dye will have less material to work through in the agarose gel compared to the polyacrylamide gel and will have easier access to the protein.