do agarose gels expire? - (Sep/03/2005 )

there is this agarose type 1 and 3:1 agarose in our lab left unopen. Since am running out of funds and cant buy agarose anymore like seakem and nusieve ( sorry how poor our lab are, and all reagents are near exhaustion), do you think its still okay to use them? I think they are left by the other projects for almost 5-6 years already .

I tried the type 1 and the 3:1, and so far its okay but I dont get good bands. Am I just paranoid? or I just have bad pcr days? Or do agarose gels expire? ( kept in proper room temperature anyway)

thanks

Try running a known good quality DNA or ladder on this agarose.

To save money, you can reuse agarose gel by remelting it.

Won't there be problem with purity when we reuse the gel?

Take a picture of your gel and then set it back into the gel box and re-run it until everything runs off into the wells. That should solve any purity problems.

-Hank