You can make it from boric acid which is a pretty common reagent. Chances are you'll already have some. I mentioned it to my supervisor and he basically said "okay whatever" and now our whole lab is using it

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This sound interesting. You can use it with both agarose and acrylamide gels? Beside the differences in buffer, voltage usage and running time, is there anything else noteworthy? you cast, run and purify DNA same as with TAE, TBE buffer? Just want to make sure ^___^

Thank you in advance

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At high voltages the difference in salt concentration in your samples becomes evident. Higher salt samples run faster. PCR products are fine but restriction digests seem to migrate faster unless you dilute them. But I'd never go back to TAE, not for anything.

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Alright, back to your problem.

I would suggest that you reduce the concentration of the gel to 0.7% instead of 1%. Alternatively, you may want to run your gel for a littel bit longer with your 1% gel.

The voltage applied during electrophoresis depends on the measurement of your electrophoresis set. Normally, for minigel, I run my gel at 85V for about 45-50 minutes, 0.7% TAE agarose gel. I am not sure of TBE gel as I have not used TBE for ages.

Good luck.

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At our univ. lab we run agarose gels at 120 v for 30-40 minutes with very good results for all sorts of genomic DNA. We use a 1XTBE gel buffer almost exclusively. I can forward you a protocol if you would like. my email is jeff.cokenour@gmail.com

Happy electrophoresing!

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