What is the purpose of constant current and constant voltage mode in agarose gel electrophoresis?

Question

What is the purpose of constant current and constant voltage mode in agarose gel electrophoresis?

Answer 1

sorry

Answer 2

For most applications using Agarose Gel Electrophoresis you use constant voltage. This is for several reasons:

1) As the gel runs the resistance in the system will change (due to heat build up). By fixing the voltage, current will drop to compensate. This prevents a build up of heat, which will cause distortions in the gel.

2) Normally Agarose Gels have variable thicknesses. If you fix voltage this is not a factor.

3) Often several gels are run together. This is only possible using fixed voltage.

See the reference below for more details.