On the mechanism of background silver staining during sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis.

A novel experimental procedure to study the factors that contribute to background silver staining in sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) is described. A mechanism is proposed for background silver staining, which was found to result primarily from the redox initiator system using ammonium persulphate (APS) and an amine such as N,N,N',N'-tetramethylethylenediamine (TEMED).