Electrophoretic Gels

To quantify gel images or to prepare them for publication, they first need to be scanned. ITC-ACHS has the equipment you need to digitize wet and dry gels, x-rays and film negatives, as well as immuno blots. No radioactive gels please!

Scanning wet gels

Wet polyacrylamide gels up to 8" x 10" can be scanned on the Molecular Dynamics densitometer. The densitometer uses a red ruby laser that is particularly good for Coomassie blue-stained gels. Silver-stained gels can be scanned, but you should take care that the gels are not overloaded. Gels can be quantified with the ImageQuant software. Gel images can be exported as TIFF files for use in Adobe Photoshop.

Hint: We suggest that you place wet gels in a sealed zip-lock bag to facilitate transport. The gel can be scanned while still in the bag, but the bag must be pressed flat enough to pass under the bar when the tray is pushed into the densitometer. The clearance is only a couple of millimeters.

Scanning dried gels

Gels dried on a transparent backing can be scanned on the densitometer. Large gels can be scanned on the large-format flatbed scanner.

Gels dried on a opaque backing, such as Whatman 3MM paper, can be scanned on the flatbed scanners.

The resulting TIFF images can be imported into ImageQuant for quantification.

Scanning X-rays and film negatives

X-ray films of gels or Northern, Southern, or Western blots can be scanned on the Molecular Dynamics densitometer or the Cobrascan X-ray film scanner. The densitometer and X-ray film scanner can also be used to scan large-format negatives such as those produced by electron microscopes.

Scanning immuno blots

Nitrocellulose or nylon filters used in antibody blots are opaque and should be scanned on a flatbed scanner. Scan the gels as color images and then change the image to grayscale for best results.

The flatbed scanners use Photoshop to capture images which can be saved as TIFF files for quantification in ImageQuant.

For more information on using the ImageQuant software, see documents ACHS-104 (Win 9.x), ACHS-103 (NT/2000), or ACHS-204 (Mac).

Please email comments or suggestions about this page to achs-secretary@virginia.edu.

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