We all know that Herring sperm DNA or Salmon sperm DNA is used for blocking non-specific binding in Southern blotting. My question is what makes them the best choice for blocking non-specific binding and why not any other DNA is used for blocking; and also why sperm DNA?
Paul Rutland
my guess is that both are quite cheap and in the early days purifying dna was a problem so these are 2 easily purified dna. Generally use so that repeat sequences are blocked prior to specific hybridisation but I expect that like many early buffers they were just what was already easily available in labs which were moving from biochemistry to genetics and such systems are quite resistant to change when they do work. I expect any other dna to work well.
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