Development of a simple and effective silver staining protocol for detection of DNA fragments

Silver staining is one of the widely used methods for DNA fragment detection in biological research. Silver staining protocols have been steadily optimized to improve detection efficiency. This research reports a continuous effort to simplify the existing silver staining protocols, lower experiment cost, and improve DNA detection sensitivity and image clarity. The new method only requires three reagents (silver nitrate, sodium hydroxide, and formaldehyde) and 6-7 min with high detection sensitivity to visualize as low as 14.6 pg (3.3 pg/mm² ) of DNA in a non-denaturing polyacrylamide gel. In comparison to previous reported protocols, the new one has the highest resolution, is the easiest to operate, takes the shortest time, and uses the fewest chemical reagents. Therefore, the new method can be used for quick generation of high quality molecular marker data in genetic analysis.