GelGreen® is a highly sensitive, non-toxic green fluorescent nucleic acid dye designed for staining DNA in agarose gels.

• Non-mutagenic, for safer handling and easy disposal
• Much more sensitive than EtBr, SYBR® Safe, and others
• Extremely stable for storage at room temperature & microwaving in agarose
• Simple precast or post-electrophoresis gel staining
• Use with UV transilluminator or blue light gel reader
• Compatible with downstream gel purification, restriction digest, sequencing and cloning

GelGreen®: A Superior Green Fluorescent DNA Gel Stain

GelGreen® is far more sensitive than SYBR® Safe. Unlike SYBR® dyes, which are known to be unstable, GelGreen® is very stable, both hydrolytically and thermally. GelGreen® is compatible 254 nm UV transilluminator, and can be imaged using a SYBR® Green or GelStar® filter. It also can be used with visible blue light excitation imagers (blue LED light box or Dark Reader®). With blue light illuminators, researchers can avoid exposure to UV irradiation for themselves and their DNA samples, for a safer work environment and higher cloning efficiency.

Non-Mutagenic and Safer for the Environment

A series of safety tests have confirmed that GelGreen® is noncytotoxic, nonmutagenic and nonhazardous at concentrations above those used for gel staining. As a result, working strength GelGreen® can be safely disposed of down the drain or in regular trash, providing convenience and reducing cost in waste disposal. For detailed test results, you may download a complete GelRed®/GelGreen® Safety Report.

How Safe is Your Gel Stain?

Many so-called “safe” DNA dyes like SYBR® Safe, Midori Green, GreenSafe, SafeView™, and RedSafe™ not only have low sensitivity, but also readily penetrate living cells to bind DNA, and some are cytotoxic. Unlike these dyes, GelGreen® is cell membrane-impermeant, so it cannot enter living cells to interact with their DNA. See our Gel Stains Comparison Flyer or  Gel Stains Comparison White Paper for details.

Choose the Right Stain for Your Application

For new users, we recommend GelGreen® 10,000X in water (catalog no. 41005), our latest formulation that eliminates the hazards of handling DMSO for better safety. We continue to offer GelGreen® 10,000X solution in DMSO for established users who do not wish to change their existing laboratory protocols. We also offer GelGreen® Agarose for convenient and safer preparation of precast gels. Also see GelRed® Nucleic Acid Gel Stain, our safer replacement for ethidium bromide.

GelGreen® can be used to stain ssDNA and RNA, but we recommend GelRed® for this application because it is five times more sensitive for single stranded nucleic acids than GelGreen®.

For more information, view our DNA Stain technology page, and see our GelRed® & GelGreen® FAQs.