Differences between DGGE & standard electrophoresis? - (Apr/24/2007 )

Can anyone tell me what's the difference between DGGE an standard agarose electrophoresis or are both the same? for standard electrophoresis, a single distinct band will appear as the primers used are specific for certain target genome but why DGGE results will appear several bands? I know 1 uses of DGGE is to determin qualitatively microbial population in soils but how is it so that DGGE but not standard electrophoresis able to do so.

DGGE= denaturation gradient gel electrophoresis, and it can detect differences of a little as a few base pairs. I have never used it so I don't know what the denaturant is, but it is present in differing concentrations (concentration gradient) across the gel, seperating nucleic acid fragments based on their differing denaturation profiles.

standard agarose electrophoresis is nowhere near as sensitive, and can usually only differentiate between significantly different size products ie around 50bp or so.

My understanding is that when environmental microbiologists attempt to determine which different bacteria are present in soil (or whatever), they PCR amplify sections of ribosomal nucleic acids. The differences in these fragments between different species are too small to detect using standard AGE.

For more detail, I would suggest you try searching the internet.