The quickest solution is washing with a solution of 5-10% bleach with a few drops of soap added (dish soap is fine), then rinsing everything with water. Use DEPC-treated water or double deionized water for stuff touching the gel directly. For stuff not touching your samples directly, rinsing with single deionized water or even tap water is fine.

If you have more preparation time, try washing with: 0.1% SDS, 0.1N NaOH, 1% peroxide. You can increase the SDS up to 5% to make it more soapy. There's a commercial product called RNaseZap that is probably made like this.

At my old lab, we kept electrophoresis equipment RNase free by segregating equipment for RNA gels and protein gels. The main issue is RNases from crude protein.

As my Ph.D advisor said, RNases are everywhere. Don't use the gel rig for anything else, store it away from dust/soil/anyone doing protein work, and don't let anyone borrow it. You'll want to clean it before every use just to be sure. I used RNaseZAP to clean my bench and equipment and never had any degradation issues.

We also use RNaseZAP to spray down any equipment before and after use. Always wear gloves when handling anything that will be coming into contact with RNases. We have materials specifically dedicated to RNA work that get covered so as they wont collect dust.

We make buffers using DEPC water which seems to work pretty well. I would highly recommend the RNaseZAP to spray down your equipment and just dedicate it to using RNA only.

Hi Trevor William Grigg

When working on RNA we usually separate our electrophoresis equipment's from DNA or protein working. We also use RNase quite spray and DEPC water for RNA work. Please follow the Tania Gonzalez Sean Schaefer comments for your work. Hope you will get best results.

Thanks

Dear use bleach and deionised waterr or RNaseZAP and handle with care.

Hello Trevor William Grigg,

Additionally to the above answers, I would like to add one thing: I used to prepare 5% SDS solution in double-distilled water and soaked all accessories needed for the procedure for a few hours, then rinsed thoroughly with DEPC-treated water.

If you had never used 5% SDS, please be careful. Dishes turn very soapy and slippery.

I re-used 5% SDS solution several times and never had problems with RNase contamination.

Good luck!