Buffer and Solution Recipes

Common laboratory buffers and solutions used in molecular biology, listed alphabetically with concentrations and preparation steps. Each recipe links to the Molarity and Dilution calculators so you can scale it to the volume and concentration you need.

C

Church's BufferHybridization buffer for Northern and Southern blotting.
Crush and Soak BufferA sodium acetate and EDTA solution used to elute DNA from crushed polyacrylamide gel slices.

D

Denhardt's Solution (50X)A concentrated blocking solution used in prehybridization and hybridization buffers for Northern and Southern blotting.
DNA Gel Loading Dye (10X and 6X)Tracking dyes for loading DNA samples onto a gel.

G

Glycine (2 M)A 2 M glycine stock solution.

H

HEPES Buffer (1 M)A 1 M HEPES stock buffer at pH 7.5.

M

MOPS Running Buffer (10X)Running buffer for denaturing RNA gels.

N

NaCl (5 M)Prepare 1 L of 5 M sodium chloride stock solution using 292.2 g of NaCl.

O

Oligo Annealing BufferBuffer and protocol for annealing complementary oligos.

P

PBS Buffer (10X)Phosphate-buffered saline, a standard isotonic buffer.
Proteinase K StockA 20 mg/ml proteinase K stock and reaction conditions.

S

SSC (20X)Saline sodium citrate buffer for hybridization.
SSPE (20X)A 20X saline-sodium phosphate-EDTA stock for nucleic acid hybridization and washing.

T

TAE Buffer (50X)The most common buffer for agarose DNA electrophoresis.
TBE Buffer (10X)Tris-borate-EDTA buffer for high-resolution gels.
TBS Buffer (10X)Tris-buffered saline for washing and blotting.
TBST BufferTris-buffered saline with 0.1% Tween 20 for Western blot and ELISA washes.
TE Buffer (10X)10X TE (Tris-EDTA) buffer for storing, protecting, and resuspending DNA and RNA.
Tris Buffer pH 7.5 (1 M)A 1 M Tris·HCl stock buffer at pH 7.5.
Tris-Glycine DNA Electrophoresis Buffer (5X)Tris-glycine buffer for DNA electrophoresis.
Tris-HEPES-SDS Running Buffer (10X)Running buffer for precise protein gels.

X

X-Gal Stock SolutionA 20 mg/ml X-Gal stock for blue-white screening.