a li'l info on agarose plz????

Answer 1

agarose is a substance made from agar, a common culture medium derived from seaweed, and some kind of sugar. it's used in a process called gel electrophoresis. this process separates molecules by size, and it is useful in DNA restriction enzyme analysis because it can compare different DNA sequences in tandem repeats

the agarose gel has a lattice structure, and large molecules in the gel are retarded by the gel, and move slower. the larger the molecule, the slower it moves. what happens in eletrophoresis is that an electric current is run through the gel, and molecules such as DNA will be attracted toward one side of the gel and start moving in that direction. smaller molecules move fast, and thus travel farther, and so after the eletrophoresis is done, you will get a pattern of bands which correspond to differently sized molecules

Answer 2

everything kz said is true! kz rules!

I would also add that agarose is also used as a resin in protein purification. For example, Nickel bound to agarose can be used to purify His-tagged proteins (see Qiagen website for details), IgG -agarose is used to purify Protein A-conjugates, etc.