question on northern blotting - (Apr/08/2005 )

Why are the gels used in northern and southern blotting so large? Why not use mini-gels instead?
I got this question from someone. I got to answer this. Can anyone please answer this? Thanks.

I have done them on minigels. Some people may prfer to do them on large gels to get better resolution but they work well on minigels.

hi
generally large gels are used for their capacity of separating more size fragments. moreover it's better to have large gels when you do a loading control. In small gels, radioactivity signals may partially overlap.

fred