Introduction

Introduction:
Agarose gel electrophoresis separates DNA fragments according to their size. Typically, a DNA molecule is digested with restriction enzymes, and the agarose gel electrophoresis is used as a diagnostic tool to visualize the fragments. An electric current is used to move the DNA molecules across an agarose gel, which is a polysaccharide matrix that functions as a sort of sieve to help "catch" the molecules as they are transported by the electric current.

This technique has lots of applications. Generally speaking you can analyze DNA fragments that result from an enzyme digestion of a larger piece of DNA to visualize the fragments and determine the sizes of the fragments. In addition to its usefulness in research techniques, agarose gel electrophoresis is a common forensic technique and is used in DNA fingerprinting.



Defination:
It is defined as "A method for separating nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) within a gel made of agarose in a suitable buffer under the influence of an electrical field."
It is an analytical method for separating molecules according to their size.
A polysaccharide gel used to measure the size of nucleic acids



Used to seperate:
1.Agarose gel electrophoresis is a method used in biochemistry and molecular biology to separate DNA, or RNA molecules by size.
2.More commonly however, agarose gel electrophoresis is used to separate DNA from PCR and cloning in the range of 100bp to about 15kb.
3.Large DNA fragments tend to get trapped in the gel matrix if only a single electrical force is applied to the gel.
A method to analyze the size of DNA (or RNA) fragments. In the presence of an electric field, larger fragments of DNA move through a gel slower than smaller ones, producing different migrating "bands