Molecular and Cellular Biology WikiProject MCB Portal edit

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TAE versus TBE edit

I wonder why people make changes on this page but do not leave any trace of their thoughts for making the changes. Is it due to the notice above saying "the current foscus" of MCB is somewhere else? I have found bits and pieces of discussions on some of changes by identified users in the history section. That is not convenient and defeats the purpose of such an online system. --Achian (talk) 00:21, 6 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

Here is the deal. I found the sentence in the article

TAE has been used at various concentrations to study free DNA solution mobility with and without sodium chloride.

ambiguous and misleading. Therefore, I changed it to

TAE has been used at various concentrations to study the mobility of DNA in solution with and without sodium chloride. However, high concentrations of sodium chloride (and many other salts) in a DNA sample retards its mobility.

By the way, The DNA does not have to be free, and most DNA samples analyzed on agarose gel are considered "very clean". The contaminants in those DNA samples are usually considered "harmless" to the mobility of the DNA sample. That is a assumption only. At times, that assumption is very misleading. Hope this helps someone out there wondering about their DNA sample on an agarose gel. --Achian (talk) 00:21, 6 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

"Preparation" section edit

In looking at the history of this article. There was once a "preparation" section describing how much of each constituent is needed to make the buffer. I assume that this section was removed because Wikipedia is not a "how to" manual, but I think it is important to include this information. In my mind, the most common reason a person would visit this article is to find out what is in the buffer, and I think it is important to include the standard concentrations, or the general range of concentrations people use. If only molarities are given instead of grams, that might avoid the "how to" nature of the information.

I do not wish to engage in any edit-war, so if you have any comments, please place them here. If there are no objections, then I will change the page in a few days. --Tea with toast (talk) 21:35, 9 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

I tend to agree with Tea - Wikipedia may nto be a 'how-to' guide, but it is a repository of factual, relevant information. Including the contents and proportions of the components of TAE buffer seems entirely logical to me. However, I see my edit has been summarily removed, so obviously others disagree. I'd love to know how this information isn't relevant, especially when a credible source is properly cited. Origamiman (talk) 04:38, 28 June 2010 (UTC)Reply