Blue Light Transilluminators for gel viewing – what types of stain can be used?

A Blue light LED transilluminator offers many advantages to today’s life science researchers.  Blue light is safer to use than ultraviolet (UV) excitation, which is traditionally used in the laboratory.  As such, researchers do not need to be at risk for burning their skin or eyes if they did not take precautions to work with UV.  Another advantage of blue light is that it does not damage DNA.  The UltraBright and UltraSlim blue light LED transilluminators available through New England BioGroup, and sold as an option with a Syngene gel documenation system, emit at the 470 nm wavelenght, which is safe for DNA.  Our LED transilluminators have an attached fold down, variable position amber screen.  Researchers can easily cut bands and do not need to wear cumbersome amber glasses while working with our system.

Below is a list of popular nucleic acid gel stains that can be viewed using our blue light box:

• EtBr (Ethidium Brominde)
• SYBR^® Safe
• SYBR Gold
• SYBR^® Green I & II
• SYPRO^® Ruby
• SYPRO^® Orange
• Coomassie Fluor™ Orange stains
• GelGreen,
• GelRed
• Lumitein™ Protein Gel Stain

If you are using a stain that is not on this list, please contact us to see if it will work for your application.