Hi there,

For instance TAE is meant to contain only tris, acetate, EDTA and Na+. If preparing with mineral water the composition will be different (depending on what minerals you have in the water...) and the ionic strength will be higher therefore it will affect its properties for running agarose gels.

Hi there,

For instance TAE is meant to contain only tris, acetate, EDTA and Na+. If preparing with mineral water the composition will be different (depending on what minerals you have in the water...) and the ionic strength will be higher therefore it will affect its properties for running agarose gels.

If you don't have access to distilled water, I so no issue with trying bottled drinking water.  My undergraduate labs even used tap water!  Basically, just try it and see if it works.

Demineralised water is water completely free (or almost) of dissolved minerals as a result of one of the following processes:

-distillation

-deionization

-membrane filtration (reverse osmosis or nanofiltration)

-electrodyalisis

-or other technologies.

The amount of dissolved solids in water that has followed one of these processes could be as low as 1 mg/l and is in any case always less than 10 mg/l. The electrical conductivity is generally less than 2 mS/m and may be even lower (< 0,1 mS/cm).

Here u can c that by distillation also we can get demineralised water.

In gel electrophoresis also mainly we need water which doesnt have any dissolved solids and very less elec conductivity.

So u can use demineralised water also for this purpose.

Hello Ahmed,

if you don´t have access to a. dist. then you could give it a try. I would suppose that you may get problems with higher voltage due to the minerals. If you only want to check yor amplification products it may work well but for analytical gels with high reproducability it may not work well.

The bottled water can't be used for electrophoresis, as it still contains some ions. This can give errant results in running the gels. If one can't afford a distillation plant or costly equipment for distilled water like Miilipore, one can simply use a simple glass distillation unit, which can easily affordable any where. 

PS: In our lab we use aqua iniectabilia which is used for infusions in the clinic. The costs per litre are about € 0.80.

Hi

One thing u have not mentioned whether gel electrophoresis for  visualization of Protein bands or DNA

If the protein is sensitive or an enzyme then the mineral water may disturb the band pattern of protein. In case of getting DNA ladder may not be affected much.

But give a try with both dist water and mineral water and u will get the difference in answer and u can mail back to us.

There many reasonable suggestions mentioned before. Perhaps, the mineral (non-flavoured) water can be used to run your electrphoretic gel. In any case, I recommend to simply boil the water (100C, 5 min). This would guarantee: (i) sterility. (ii) partial demineralisation. In fact, boiled mineral water will have a lower ion content that a non-bolied water and its properties will be more close to standard distilled water. 

CAN you?  Yes.

SHOULD you?  Depends on the kinds of results you're seeking.

If you're looking for isolated protein bands that will stand out on their own anyway, then you'll most likely be totally fine using mineral water.  The ionic strength differences of mineral vs distilled water may result in some overheating of the gel, so I'd keep an eye on your voltage - extreme overheating may melt the agarose.

I'm curious, though, as to why you would want to?  A quick Google Shopping search lists a 24 count flat of 16 oz Perrier bottled mineral water for $16.88 - that's 4.4 cents per ounce.  VWR lists distilled water at $7.55 per gallon, or 5.8 cents per ounce.  Is that marginal cost difference really worth the risk of marginal results?

Yes. You can. The ion concentration in most electrophoresis buffers is much higher (ca. 10-fold)  than that in typical tap water (whether out of the tap or bottled for drinking) and will have little consequence on the resulting current. However, you should consider switching from TBE or TAE to a Tris-free, low-ionic-strength buffer, such as 5 mM lithium boric acid or sodium boric acid (neither the Tris nor the EDTA are really needed; Brody and Kern 2004). This saves time and money on electrophoresis media preparation, and saves time when running the gels. For a medium that is free of Tris and has low ionic strength, the gel can be run at much higher voltage without overheating (e.g., I run DNA gels at 300 V or about 60 V/cm in 5 mM lithium borate and get the results much quicker than I could with TBE). For these lower ionic strength media, some tap water or bottled drinking water may then have enough salts to influence the results.  But this might simply mean running the gel at a rate slower than might otherwise be possible (but still faster than is possible with TAE or TBE).

References:

Brody, J. R., and S. E. Kern. 2004. History and principles of conductive media for standard DNA electrophoresis. Anal Biochem 333: 1–13. doi:10.1016/j.ab.2004.05.054

Brody, J. R., E. S. Calhoun, E. Gallmeier, T. D. Creavalle, and S. E. Kern. 2004. Ultra-fast high-resolution agarose electrophoresis of DNA and RNA using low-molarity conductive media. BioTechniques 37: 598, 600, 602.

For Polyacrilamide gel electrophoresis it works, I have successfully used it but band quality may not be sharp and pointed. For agarose gel electrophoresis distilled water may not work properly because of ionic strength.

I would not recommend using mineral water in the preparation of TAE buffer without prior optimization/ standardizing the voltage and duration of gel run. However, even the results from optimized protocol may not be as good as those obtained from using distilled or deionized water, since the exact salt concentration of mineral water and how it influences and/or interacts with biomolecuar separation on the gel is unknown. 

So I would recommend sticking to the standards to yield good quality results.

Dear Ahmed,

As Many of us used Rain water in college level because the ultimate output we want to justify either our sample has been amplified of failed do so.

When coming to the to the Custom samples or Diagnostic samples in traditional Laboratories it wont work because based on the Electro phorosis results we need go for Sanger sequencing of Further process and more over here we will get hardly 10-20 uL sample where we can not go for the external experiments.

So Mineral water is not recommended  as per Mr. Dominique Liger and Mr. Dirk Schmidt.