The charity has uploaded a new training video, demonstrating how to use a horizontal polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (hPAGE) system which has been developed in collaboration with Cleaver Scientific (www.cleaverscientific.com).

 

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 model is based on the published work of Izzo et al (2006). 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. Kirkhouse Trust’s Tumie Akintewe, who has been trialling the unit in the charity’s laboratory said: “Surprisingly, this unit is easier to use than standard agarose systems".

 

The hPAGE units will be provided to all the laboratories that KT 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 this 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.

 

The video is also available on YouTube.

 

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