FastGene Blue LED Gel Illuminators

Say goodbye to UV light
FastGene Blue LED Illuminators are LED-based illuminators for safe detection of DNA and RNA. Utilizing the technology of ultra-bright LEDs provides similar results to UV transilluminators in many cases, but without the risk of damaging DNA in a gel or harming your skin and eyes. These systems are designed to produce stronger signals and lower background by illuminating from opposite sides (dual LED matrices) as opposed to illuminating from underneath like most other gel illuminators. The FastGene Blue systems were developed for use with non-carcinogenic dyes like Midori Green and Sybr Green. They are not for use with ethidum bromide (EtBr) but the newer FastGene Blue/Green illuminator does work with red dyes such as GelRed and EtBr. LEDs are safer, more stable, more reliable and more efficient than traditional UV bulbs making the FastGene Illuminators very compact and extraordinarily durable.

Get your DNA the easy way
With the FastGene LED illuminators and Midori Green Stain, it becomes extremely simple to cut your DNA fragment out of gels. You don’t need to wear protective eyewear, or worry about mutagenic dyes. Switch on the LEDs and excise your DNA fragment with our FastGene Agarose Gel Band Cutter. Fast, precise and totally safe, it’s the 21st century way of working with DNA. There is simply no reason to put yourself or your lab staff at risk during routine handling of DNA for subcloning, genetic analysis and many other applications.

Safer for you and better for your subcloning
By using safe DNA dyes and safe LED illuminators you can improve your subcloning transformation efficiencies by THREE-FOLD. In this example, a plasmid vector was double digested with suitable restriction enzymes to create two sticky-ended DNA fragments: the lacZ gene (3,536 bp) and the backbone of the vector (4,318 bp). Equal amounts of digested DNA were electrophoresed on 1% agarose gels. The gels were stained with either ethidium bromide or Midori Green Direct gel stain according to the corresponding manuals, and then viewed using either a UV transilluminator or the FastGene Blue/Green LED Illuminator, respectively. The two DNA fragments were excised from the gels and purified using a silica membrane based purification kit. The lacZ gene and the vector backbone were religated using T4 DNA ligase transformed into DH5a cells and plated onto selection plates. The total number of blue and white colonies was counted to evaluate cloning efficiency. Each experiment was conducted in triplicate, and the average cloning efficiency was determined. Midori Green Direct resulted in dramatic increase of positive transformants.

 
Midori Green Can Boost Your Cloning Results!

Ethidium bromide is typically used in conjunction with a strong UV light source to excise DNA bands for purification prior to the ligation reaction. Short wave-length light is well known to cause thymidine dimers and damage the DNA. The extent of this damage is not always appreciated. High energy light wreaks havoc on a DNA fragment in mere seconds. As can be seen below, after only a 15 sec exposure of DNA in a standard agarose gel, cloning efficiency starts to drop. And after a 30 sec exposure your cloning experiment is all but dead! In contrast, the cloning efficiency of protocols that use Blue LEDs seem completely immune to any deleterious effects. If your lab isn’t able to break itself of its ethidium bromide habit, using a Blue/Green LED illuminator (and imaging systems) have no significant impact on cloning efficiency or DNA integrity.

UV Transilluminators Kill Cloning Experiments