There are two bands along the length of these gels that mimic the shape of the wells. They show up even in lanes with no sample loaded (the lanes next to the ladder on the gel with two ladders). Any ideas for about what could be causing these bands?
Hi Ryan Judy . A common contaminant, especially visible on silver stained gels, is human keratin (MW 40-70 kDa). The keratin can be introduced e.g. when making sample buffers without wearing gloves.
Dear Ryan,
I suspect that your 'contaminant' is simply an over-flow from the heavily-loaded lanes. If you want to prevent this, either (i) load more concentrated, lower-volume samples; (ii) make sure that your loading buffer is dense enough when mixed with the sample to sink to the bottom of the wells; (iii) use gels with deeper wells; or (iv) wash out the wells with no sample immediately before turning on the power (this is cosmetic; any over-flow from the heavily-loaded wells may go into adjacent wells even if they are loaded with other samples). Andrew
Dear Ryan,
I fully share Andrew's interpretation of your gel-long contaminating bands as well as his suggestions to overcome this issue.
Good luck with your experiments.
With kind regards,
Erwan
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