LiGreen™ is a sensitive, stable and environmentally safe green fluorescent nucleic acid dye designed to stain either dsDNA, ssDNA or RNA in agarose gels. These stains are next-generation fluorescent nucleic acid gel stains designed to replace the highly mutagenic ethidium bromide (EB). These dyes are superior to EB by having a combination of high sensitivity, low toxicity and great stability.
Key Features
• Safer than EB: Shown by Ames test and other tests to be non-mutagentic and non-cytotoxic.
• Ultra-sensitive: Much more sensitive than GelGreen and SYBR Safe.
• Compatible with standard blue LED and UV transilluminators.
• Use with blue light reduces mutagenesis for gel excision and subsequent cloning.
Customer Testimonials
"I have been using LiGreen™ Ultra Nucleic Acid Gel Stain and dNTPs set (100mM each) more than one years, both products are of excellent quality and are cheaper than other companies, I will continue to use them."
------ NIH/NCI, Dr. Ping Yu, Staff Scientist
| LiGreen™ | LiGreen™ Plus | LiGreen™ Ultra | LiGreen™ Red |
Sensitivity (dsDNA) | Sensitive (~2 ng) | Highly sensitive (~0.2 ng) | Ultra sensitive (~60 pg) | Sensitive (~1 ng) |
Nonhazardous | √ | √ | √ | √ |
dsDNA | √
| √ | √ | √ |
ssDNA | | √ | √ | |
RNA |
| √
| √
|
|
Precast gel staining | √ | √ | | √ |
Post-gel staining |
|
| √ | |
Gel band excision for cloning | √ | √ | √ | |
Excitation Source | Blue light/UV | Blue light/UV | Blue light/UV | UV |
Recommended emission filter | SYBR filter | SYBR filter | SYBR filter | EB filter |
Case Study

Gel stain results with LiGreen™, LiGreen™ Plus, and LiGreen™ Ultra (Left), and comparison results with SYBR Safe and GelGreen (Right). Left: Two-fold serial dilutions of a 1 kb DNA ladder were loaded onto each gel in 3 lanes in the amounts of 25 ng, 50 ng and 100 ng (left to right), then post-stained with LiGreen™, LiGreen™ Plus, and LiGreen™ Ultra. Right: Results show LiGreen™ has similar sensitivity with SYBR Safe and GelGreen, LiGreen™ Plus and LiGreen™ Ultra have much better sensitivity.
Cell permeability tests with SYBR Safe, LiGreen™, LiGreen™ Plus, and LiGreen™ Red. Hela cells were incubated at 37ºC with 1× SYBR Safe, LiGreen™, LiGreen™ Plus, and LiGreen™ Red for 30 min. LiGreen™ Plus and LiGreen™ Red could not penetrate cell membranes to bind DNA in living cells, and were much safer than SYBR Safe, which rapidly entered cells and stained nuclei.
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