Innovative Horizontal Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis (hPAGE) System

Cleaver Scientific has announced the introduction of a horizontal polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (hPAGE) system developed in collaboration with the Kirkhouse Trust, an organization supporting research and education in the biological sciences.

Whilst vertical systems are commonly used for polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, this newly developed unit’s horizontal format allows for a large number of samples to be run simultaneously and combines this with the greater resolution of polyacrylamide compared with agarose. The main advantage of the system is that it is very simple to pour and cast the polyacrylamide gels which takes away some of the complexity normally associated with vertical gel casting. The model is based on the published work of Izzo et al (2006).

Dr Janice Henderson of the Kirkhouse Trust commented "We are very pleased at the successful completion of this project in conjunction with Cleaver Scientific. In the near future hPAGE units will be supplied to all the laboratories that the Kirkhouse Trust supports to further research into the improvement of food legume crops such as the common bean and cowpea using marker assisted selection (MAS).

Markers based on SSRs (simple sequence repeats) have been developed with the aim of generating elite lines with resistance to pathogens/parasites. The breeding programmes generate many samples requiring analysis and the Cleaver Scientific hPAGE system makes it possible to compare many samples and achieve a resolution of a 4-6 bp difference between markers which helps to distinguish between the resistant and non-resistant plants. In addition, the hPAGE unit has great flexibility as the size of the glass plate can be varied, for example a full, half or quarter plate can be used which makes it possible to run several different gel concentrations at the same time".