MIDORI Green Easy — Safe DNA/RNA Stain

Ultra-sensitive for LED illumination

We developed MIDORI Green Easy to have the same excellent signal quality and low background as MIDORIGreen Xtra. What makes it different? MIDORI Green Easy is formulated so that switching from SYBR® Safe is simple. No change to protocol, add the same amount to an agaorse gel, and presto! You’ll get equal or better results for a fraction the cost. And because it is derived from Midori Green Xtra, you can be confident that it works amazingly with visible excitation light such as Blue LEDs or our Blue/Green LED technology.  Free samples are available, so see for yourself how MIDORI Green Easy provides safe detection with unbeatable sensitivity.

Easy switch from SYBR Safe
MIDORI Green Easy enables an effortless switch from using SYBR Safe to stain agarose gels. The performance of MIDORI Green Easy and SYBR Safe is identical and each tube provides exactly the same dye concentration (10,000 x) and tube volume (0.4 mL) as SYBR® Safe (sufficient for 4 L agarose) – for a fraction of the cost.

Three makes a happy family
The core MIDORI Green molecule has been formulated into three different green fluorescent stains optimized for your lab’s needs. First, there’s MIDORI Green Advance, which offers an excellent signal-to-noise ratio and solid sensitivity for even short nucleic acid fragments. MIDORI Green Advance is added into the agarose gel prior to running samples (much like EtBr), and provides sensitivity of detection on par with EtBr when visualized with blue LEDs or Nippon Genetics’ superior Blue/Green LED technology. The second, MIDORI Green Direct, is designed to mix with your sample and load onto a stain-free gel. MIDORI Green Direct has the loading dye included, and detects nucleic acid fragments to a similar, if not slightly better, level as MIDORI Green Advance. The newest member of the family is MIDORI Green Xtra/Easy. Like Advance, Xtra/Easy is added to molten agarose and buffer. It’s chemical structure is optimized for Blue/Green and Blue LED light, leading to unbeatable fluorescence signals of DNA and RNA in agarose gels. MIDORI Green Advance and MIDORI Green Direct dyes are compatible with UV-light, but slightly less efficient when using UV rather than the non-damaging visible excitation light of LEDs. Most importantly for labs, MIDORI Green Xtra/Easy does not stain the agarose gel, leading to an excellent signal-to-noise ratio. Xtra/Easy makes the detection of even the most minute quantities of DNA or RNA possible (and certainly better than EtBr)—it’s not just a replacement for EtBr, it’s an upgrade.

Safer for you and better for your subcloning
By using safe MIDORI Green dyes and safe Blue/Green LED illumination you can improve your subcloning transformation efficiencies by THREE-FOLD. In the example below, 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 re-ligated 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 a 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-wavelength light is known to cause thymine dimers and damage DNA. The extent of this damage is not always appreciated. High-energy light wreaks havoc on DNA fragments in mere seconds. As can be seen below, cloning efficiency starts to drop after just a 15 second exposure of DNA in a standard agarose gel. After a 30 second exposure, your cloning experiment is all but dead! In contrast, the cloning efficiency of protocols that use blue LEDs or Nippon Genetics’ super-performing Blue/Green LEDs are completely unaffected by this deleterious effect. If your lab can’t to break itself of its ethidium bromide habit, using a Blue/Green LED Illuminator (or imaging system) should still have an immediate positive impact on DNA integrity and cloning efficiency.

UV Transilluminators Kill Cloning Experiments

Additional Information

Researchers really like Midori Green Xtra

“After receiving a free sample of Midori Green Xtra from Bulldog Bio, my lab has fully made the switch to their product after years of using Invitrogen’s Syber Safe. Switching was the easiest choice to make! Midori is synonymous with regard to Syber Safe’s protocol; however, we use significantly less product and our gels have never looked better!”
Gabrielle, 2019
Old Dominion University

“… the higher cost of Xtra Midori is offset by the lower volume required …We will be ordering this new version henceforth.”
Malcolm, 2019
Davidson College

Product Evaluation - Midori Green Xtra post-staining method

Product Evaluation of Midori Green Xtra post-staining
method

Product Evaluation - Midori Green Xtra in DNA Staining

Product Evaluation of Midori Green Xtra in DNA Staining

APP NOTE - Long-term Storage of Midori Green Xtra Gels

How to store gels stained with Midori Green Xtra