electrophoresis allowing a good separation of the fragments can be determined experimentally by loading different samples on a parallel gel at constant time intervals.The fragments to be loaded on DGGE gels are usually PCR products. An optimal resolution is obtained when the molecules do not completely denature. The addition of a 30- to 40-bp GC clamp to one of the PCR primers insures that the fragment of DNAwill remain partially double-stranded and that the region screened is in the lowest melting domain (Myers et al., 1985; Sheffield et al.,1989). Chemiclamps are psoralen- derivatised PCR primers that can be used as alternative to GC clamps providing the same effect (Fu¨hr, 1996). However, as the chemiclamps are covalently linked to the DNA strands at one end, they cannot be used when DGGE fragments are to be sequenced because the bands cannot be reamplified directly, unless nested primers are used. The melting behaviour of double-stranded DNA has been described by a computer model developed by Lerman et al. (1984). Computer software is available, such as MacMeltk (Bio-Rad, Hercules, USA), which can calculate DNA melting profiles and show regions of theoretically high and low stability domains of a known sequence. Placement of primers and GC clamps can thus be optimised by analysis of the placement effect on the DNA melting profile. Bands in DGGE fingerprints can be revealed by ethidium bromide staining. The most sensitive procedure is silver staining (Felske et al., 1996), although silver-stained gels cannot be used for hybridisation experiments and single-strand DNA fragments are also detected. SYBER Green I is also an alternative for visualising DGGE gels (Muyzer et al., 1997). SYBER Green staining does not give background staining, thus allowing the detection of DNA fragments even at very low concentrations. The DGGE equipment is supplied by different companies such as Bio-Rad, INGENY (Leiden, The Netherlands), and CBS Scientific (Del Mar, USA).
đang được dịch, vui lòng đợi..
