MIDORI Green Direct is a safe alternative to ethidium bromide for visualization of double-stranded DNA, single-stranded DNA, and RNA in agarose gels. In contrast to most other non-ethidium bromide based dyes, MIDORIGreen Direct is just added to your samples. The loading dye is already included. You do not need to add any other loading dye to both gel matrix and running buffers
The direct staining of the DNA rather than the gel eliminates the background staining providing a perfect signal (Fig. 1). MIDORIGreen Direct was developed to work with Blue Light LED illuminators, but you can also use it with a regular UV transilluminator.
Fig.1: MIDORI Green Direct detected by blue/green LED light vs ethidium bromide detected using UV-light
The isolation of DNA from agarose gels enables downstream applications. It is well known that many dyes, such as ethidium bromide or even SYBR™ Green are strong enzyme inhibitors due to their intercalating properties. MIDORI Green dyes bind to the DNA backbone. This results in a much higher efficiency for downstream applications, i.e. cloning (Fig. 2), seqeuncing, PCR, etc.
Fig.2: Better cloning efficiency with MIDORI Green Direct. Increased number of transformed E. coli colonies with MIDORI Green Direct than with ethidium bromide.
MIDORI Green Direct stain is non-carcinogenic and less mutagenic compared to ethidium bromide. Furthermore, we can state that MIDORI Green Direct is impenetrable to latex gloves and cell membranes.
MIDORI Green Direct is classified as non-hazardous to aquatic life, under CCR Title 22 regulation. Thus, small amounts of MIDORI Green Direct stain can be safely released into the environment.
