Ethidium bromide solution 1 M

A 10mg/mL easy-to-use solution of ethidium bromide in specially filtered, deionized water which is excellent for nucleic acid electrophoresis and purification applications, eliminates the dust hazard associated with powdered ethidium bromide and saves time spent on weighing and mixing. Used in the fluorometric detection of double stranded nucleic acids in gel electrophoresis. Also acts as an RNA polymerase inhibitor, and in separation of high molecular weight DNA's. It confers a deep red stain to DNA by acting as an intercalating agent between the starch bases. Subsequent fluorescence techniques enable the extraction and characterization of DNA bands.

Ethidium bromide(EtBr) has been used extensively to reduce mitochondrial DNA copy number in proliferating cells and most commonly used in nucleic acid stain for PAGE or agarose gel electrophoresis. The fluorescence of EtBr increases 21-fold upon binding to double-stranded RNA and 25-fold on binding double-stranded DNA so that destaining the background is not necessary with a low stain concentration (10 µg/mL). Ethidium bromide has been used in a number of fluorimetric assays for nucleic acids. It has been shown to bind to single-stranded DNA (although not as strongly) and triple-stranded DNA.4 Because of its ability to bind to DNA, EtBr is an inhibitor of DNA polymerase.

Ethidium bromide intercalates double-stranded DNA and RNA and acts as a frameshift mutagen. It can also be used in conjunction with acridine orange to differentiate between viable, apoptotic and necrotic cells.