Improved Rapid Methodology for the Isolation of Nucleic Acids from Agarose Gels

Improved methodology is presented with which DNA may be rapidly isolated from agarose gels. Hydroxyapatite is used to bind the nucleic acid after agarose solubilization and a sodium citrate buffer is used to elute the nucleic acid free of agarose. Rapid concentration of the sample may then be effected by ethanol precipitation. Purified oyster glycogen may be used as carrier in this regard and does not inhibit restriction endonucle-ases nor T4 DNA ligase in the concentrations used. This methodology is useful for the isolation of single- and double-stranded DNA, supercoil plasmid DNA, and mRNA.