Modern techniques for protein detection on polyacrylamide gels: problems arising from the use of dyes of undisclosed structures for scientific purposes

For decades, gel electrophoresis has been the most widely used technique for protein analysis. Traditionally, staining methods using silver or Coomassie brilliant blue (CBB) have been used for protein detection. With the rapid growth of proteomics, however, the limitations and experimental disadvantages of these routine detection methods have become obvious (www.dir.niehs.nih.gov/proteomics/backgrd.htm; www.probes.com). This has attracted the attention of companies providing analytical reagents to the global marketplace, resulting in production of new reagents with the claim of more efficient detection for protein analysis based on fluorescence and luminescence. The widely used methods of protein visualization as well as dyes recently developed for this application are critically reviewed here. Table 1 lists all of the dyes discussed below;