Nucleic Acid Decontamination with the ExitusPlus Technology
Advanced experiments in gene technology demonstrate that even small amounts of free DNA molecules are sufficient to cause infections, recombination, or biological transformation. The complete decontamination of equipment and surfaces from any DNA molecules is important for biological containment and safety, as well as preventing artifacts in PCR amplification experiments. Using new methods that detect extremely low levels of DNA molecules, we investigated the molecular mechanism of action of various commercially available DNA decontamination reagents. We found that when using high concentrations of DNA and short incubation times, none of the conventional reagents destroyed DNA molecules efficiently, despite their corrosive or even toxic properties.
