SYBR™ Gold Nucleic Acid Gel Stain is the most sensitive fluorescent stain we offer for the detection of nucleic acids. Use with UV transilluminators, the Dark Reader (see stained nucleic acid gel below), laser scanners, or blue light transilluminators such as the Safe Imager™ 2.0 or the E-Gel™ Imager.

Features of SYBR™ Gold Nucleic Acid Gel Stain:

• Ultra Sensitive: 25–100 times more sensitive than ethidium bromide. Detect as little as 25 pg of DNA
• Improved DNA Cloning Efficiency: Excitable with blue light transillumination, which does not cause DNA damage
• Increased Signal to Background Ratio: More than 1000-fold signal enhancement when bound to nucleic acids
• Versatile: Detects dsDNA, ssDNA and RNA in native, glyoxal, formaldehyde or urea gels

Stain Properties
SYBR™ Gold stain is a proprietary unsymmetrical cyanine dye that exhibits >1000-fold fluorescence enhancement upon binding to nucleic acids and has a high quantum yield (∼0.6) upon binding to double- or single-stranded DNA or to RNA¹. Excitation maxima for dye-nucleic acid complexes are at ∼495 nm and ∼300 nm and the emission maximum is ∼537 nm (see spectra).

Stain Sensitivity
SYBR™ Gold stain is >10-fold more sensitive than ethidium bromide for detecting DNA and RNA in denaturing urea, glyoxal, and formaldehyde gels, even with 300 nm transillumination (see visualization of glyoxalatd RNA below). SYBR™ Gold stain has also been shown to be much more sensitive than SYBR™ Green II stain for detecting single strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) products (see figure below). Furthermore, it is much more sensitive than silver-staining for the detection of double-stranded DNA in native polyacrylamide gels (see sensitivity comparison below).

¹Tuma RS, Beaudet MP, Jin X, Jones LJ, Cheung CY, Yue S, Singer VL. Characterization of SYBR Gold nucleic acid gel stain: a dye optimized for use with 300-nm ultraviolet transilluminators. Anal Biochem (1999) 268:278-288. (PMID: 10075818)