Madge - Microplate Array Diagonal Gel Electrophoresis

Abstract

Madge - Microplate Array Diagonal Gel ElectrophoresisMicroplate array diagonal gel electrophoresis (MADGE) was invented for molecular genetic epidemio-logical studies. MADGE is a highly flexible, cost effective, microplate compatible solution to high throughput electrophoresis needs. It enables several thousands to million gel lines per day for direct assay of single-base variation in different capacity laboratories. Variants of the standard 96-well MADGE include: 96-well stretch-MADGE, 192-well MADGE, 384-well MADGE, and 768-well MADGE. Melt-MADGE combines the temporal thermal ramp apparatus to achieve similar throughput for de novo mutation scanning. Basic MADGE principles and procedures, preparation of MADGE gels, electrophoresis, visualization and analysis of these gels, as well as modifications of the basic 96-well MADGE will be discussed in detail. For the first time in our country, this revolutionary polyacrylamid electrophoresis was done in 1998. We shortly review our studies which used MADGE for high throughput genotyping of the apolipoprotein E. MADGE and melt-MADGE will have an important role in the future genetic research of complex diseases and especially in pharmacogenomics.