I was performing a gel cleanup and accidentally added 100 ul of water, rather than 10 ul, to elute my DNA. How could I reduce the volume of my gel cleanup to get a better DNA concentration? Would leaving my tube open and warming it slightly over a period of time evaporate off the water or would this also ruin my sample?
Yes, over dilution of DNA can affect the quality and over heating to evaporate the excess water too do affect its quality.
The best way is to re-extract your DNA and get good results.
For instance, when you are extracting DNA from bacteria using a protocol by Schaad, they have time period for the heating or boiling. Prolong heating/boiling can denature the DNA hence you may not get good and reliable results.
Molecular works are delicate so one must treat it as such because when one step fails, you are not luckily to get results.
Wish you all the best in your research.
Also, you can do an ethanol precipitation or an isopropanol precipitation of DNA and later re-dissolve the pellet to the required volume. These methods wont damage the DNA. Precipitation is most efficient by isopropanol method but you will need to wash the pellet properly with 70% ethanol to remove the salt. I have included both the protocols. Should take about 2 hours.
Isopropanol precipitation of DNA :
http://cshprotocols.cshlp.org/content/2017/8/pdb.prot093385.abstract
Ethanol precipitation of DNA :
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/hlalab/files/ethanol-precipitation-of-rna_hla.pdf
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