I have read somewhere that these should be only taken as a frame of reference? I am assuming that my samples with a 260/280 ratio of ~1.5 are too low, but when I run it on a 1% agarose gel, the sample appears indistinguishable from my high quality samples that have 260/280 ratios of ~2. Does anyone have any suggestions on the cause for this discrepancy?
Also, would you consider these samples degraded?
Hello
Purity of your extracted RNA might not be evaluated by agarose electrophoresis. Keep it in mind that nanodrop cannot tell you about integrity of your sample at all.
Regards
Hello Troncey, how are you? So, the ratio 260/280 of your samples are too low probably your samples have protein contaminant. Try to use a 1.5% agarose gel instead 1% to access the RNA integrity. If the 28S and 18S bands do not appear clearly maybe your RNA are degraded.
Best regards.
When you measure the ratio of 260/280 by a nanodrop, it simply gives you an idea of purity of your DNA or RNA sample, but not integrity. On the other hand, when you visualize the gel by staining it with an intercalating dye, you will know the quality of your sample in terms of fragmentation/ degradation, but not purity.
This is the reason why all your samples look similar on agarose gels.
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