Nancy-520 from Sigma-Aldrich is a fluorescent stain for dsDNA on agarose electrophoresis gels that offers higher sensitivity than ethidium bromide and an easy and reliable staining procedure.
Nancy-520 is said to be a safe and sensitive alternative to ethidium bromide and SYBR Green I.
It is less mutagenic than ethidium bromide and SYBR I, according to Ames test.
Nancy-520 has an excitation maximum at 520nm and an emission maximum at 560nm.
It is provided as a 5,000x stock solution (500ul).
The limit of detection is 0.5ng/band of dsDNA.
Several devices can be used for the fluorescence detection, for example, illumination on a transilluminator (UV - or bluelight screen (for example, Dark-Reader, Clare Chemical Research) and detection via CCD-camera (for example, Kodak Gel-Logic-100), or Polaroid camera.
Alternatively, a laser-scanner can be used (for example, Fuji FLA-3000), with 473nm excitation and 520nm emission filter, or 532nm excitation and 580nm emission filter.
Other imaging systems are possible with the corresponding excitation sources and emission filter settings.
Nancy-520 can be used to quantify dsDNA in solution, with a linear range between 0 and 2ug/ml of DNA.
