Coomassie Dye - SDS-PAGE gel - (Apr/29/2008 )

Is it totally ok use heat to make staining gels with Coomassie faster? How do you do it? Just put the gel and dye in the microwave? For how long? And, do you destain using heat also?

I use colloidal Coomassie ("blue silver") and if I'm in hurry I use 50 deg.C oven/heater to stain and destain gels.

I've never tried microwave but as good as I know 5 minutes is sufficient for both - stain and desain.

If you use the microwave avoid to use Methanol in the staining/destaining solution you can use instead Ethanol which smells far less, usually 1mn is more than enough to warm up 50ml of solution don't overcook otherwise your gel wont like it Of course you should wear gloves in case any spill occurs