Both coomassie and destain contain methanol, at least in our lab, that's why I said that the gel's staining and destaining makes it toxic. To avoid that, we wash the gel as you said using PBS before mashing it, and also use 2-propanol instead of methanol to make the stain-destain. In my experience it is much safer that way. Hope it works....
First of all, mdfenko is right. The easiest way is to excise the band itself and mash it in PBS, but this will raise a huge immune response and may kill your animal because the gel is toxic, since you'll have to stain and destain it to see your band. If you do that, use coomassie and destain with 2-propanol instead of methanol as it is milder.
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