Structure of the polymer:

The instruments and reagents significant for PAGE-Gel are gel casting apparatus, loading buffer and running buffer. Casting of gel is completed in such a way in which the whole slab will have two portions. One portion (at the top) is known as stacking gel and the rest part (the bottom one) is known as the running gel.

While the detergent SDS (sodium dodecyl sulphate) is added to the proteins during the sample preparation, proteins become negatively charged through their attachment to the SDS anions. Whenever separated on a polyacrylamide gel, the process is abbreviated as SDS-PAGE (for Sodium Dodecyl Sulphate PolyAcrylamide Gel Electrophoresis). These negatively charged proteins are permitted to run by the polyacrylamide gel towards positive electrode. The methods is a powerful tool for the identification of the protein as well as determination of mass of a protein. A known marker protein mixture is used to compare and determine the mass of a protein.

Figure: Schematic diagram of PAGE-gel electrophoresis