How I Learned to Load an Agarose Gel

First, we must understand what makes a student proficient in this area. A student is proficient if they: demonstrate the ability to correctly load an agarose gel, they hold the pipet beneath the surface of the buffer and over the well of the gel, depresses the pipet plunger slowly to the first stop, gently delivers the sample into the well, does not release the pipet plunger until the pipet is lifted from the buffer, and during electrophoresis, the bands of the sample loading dye are evenly sized.

Now that we know what makes a student proficient, we can begin to talk about where I have applied these skills. In charge of the gel brigade, we practiced gel electrophoresis in order to get a better understanding of how to load a gel, run the gel, and use a power supply.

Picture of Loaded Dyes in The Wells

of an Agarose Gel