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Are other fluorescent tags used instead of ethidium bromide safer?
Ethidium bromide (EtBr) is a well-known fluorescent tag usually applied in molecular biological techniques like agarose gel electrophoresis. The mechanism of action for such compounds is known, in which these compounds are able to bind to the kinetoplastid DNA and to alter their conformation to Z-DN...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2013
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4028844/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24355254 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/2008-2231-21-71 |
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author | Saeidnia, Soodabeh Abdollahi, Mohammad |
author_facet | Saeidnia, Soodabeh Abdollahi, Mohammad |
author_sort | Saeidnia, Soodabeh |
collection | PubMed |
description | Ethidium bromide (EtBr) is a well-known fluorescent tag usually applied in molecular biological techniques like agarose gel electrophoresis. The mechanism of action for such compounds is known, in which these compounds are able to bind to the kinetoplastid DNA and to alter their conformation to Z-DNA molecules that stop replication of kinetoplastid DNA leading to Trypanosoma death. Although the usual amounts used in laboratories are considered as below the level required to cause toxicity (LD(50) in oral administration in rat is 1.5 g/Kg), the mentioned concentrations are high enough to involve in replication of mitochondrial DNA in some human cell lines. Regarding the points that EtBr is very stable in the environment and if degraded especially by use of bleaches that result in formation of mutagenic compounds, there is a big concern about its use. Although application of EtBr is going to be restricted and replaced with other tags such as SYBR(®) products, the safety of the new substituted compounds are still in doubt and except a few data, there is no essential evidence available to confirm that they are safer than EtBr. Further investigations are recommended to compare their relative biosafety hazards. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4028844 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-40288442014-05-22 Are other fluorescent tags used instead of ethidium bromide safer? Saeidnia, Soodabeh Abdollahi, Mohammad Daru Editorial Ethidium bromide (EtBr) is a well-known fluorescent tag usually applied in molecular biological techniques like agarose gel electrophoresis. The mechanism of action for such compounds is known, in which these compounds are able to bind to the kinetoplastid DNA and to alter their conformation to Z-DNA molecules that stop replication of kinetoplastid DNA leading to Trypanosoma death. Although the usual amounts used in laboratories are considered as below the level required to cause toxicity (LD(50) in oral administration in rat is 1.5 g/Kg), the mentioned concentrations are high enough to involve in replication of mitochondrial DNA in some human cell lines. Regarding the points that EtBr is very stable in the environment and if degraded especially by use of bleaches that result in formation of mutagenic compounds, there is a big concern about its use. Although application of EtBr is going to be restricted and replaced with other tags such as SYBR(®) products, the safety of the new substituted compounds are still in doubt and except a few data, there is no essential evidence available to confirm that they are safer than EtBr. Further investigations are recommended to compare their relative biosafety hazards. BioMed Central 2013-12-19 /pmc/articles/PMC4028844/ /pubmed/24355254 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/2008-2231-21-71 Text en Copyright © 2013 Saeidnia and Abdollahi; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Editorial Saeidnia, Soodabeh Abdollahi, Mohammad Are other fluorescent tags used instead of ethidium bromide safer? |
title | Are other fluorescent tags used instead of ethidium bromide safer? |
title_full | Are other fluorescent tags used instead of ethidium bromide safer? |
title_fullStr | Are other fluorescent tags used instead of ethidium bromide safer? |
title_full_unstemmed | Are other fluorescent tags used instead of ethidium bromide safer? |
title_short | Are other fluorescent tags used instead of ethidium bromide safer? |
title_sort | are other fluorescent tags used instead of ethidium bromide safer? |
topic | Editorial |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4028844/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24355254 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/2008-2231-21-71 |
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