Which is a better one to suspend extracted DNA? TE buffer or ultrapure water?
Hi there,
It all depends on the downstream use you make of the DNA. Sometimes EDTA has to be avoided then water is better than TE provided it is not too acidic (which is actually the case most of the time). Therefore I usually prefer 10mM Tris/HCl pH8 (this is the elution buffer from some of the DNA purification kits, ThermoFisher for instance).
if the most likely use for dna is for pcr then I think it is better to use tris/edta. The tris buffers alkaline so stops acid depurination of the dna and the edta is a chelating agent that removes divalent ions like Mg from solution so ensuring that nucleases cannot work and degrade the dna but as Dominique says if the downstream application is affected by the presence of edta then the edta can be omitted quite safely
We are using TE, pH 8 for the storage of DNA. We are facing no issues with that albeit never tried water for the same purpose.
I suppose you mean "disslove" rather than "suspend". If your material is not dissolving, it is not DNA.
If you use pure water, the DNA will be denatured (i.e singlestranded - so will not digest with restriction enzymes, for example). Better, as Paul says, to use TE.
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