Cresol red (full name: ''o''-cresolsulfonephthalein) is a

triarylmethane dye Triarylmethane dyes are synthetic organic compounds containing triphenylmethane backbones. As dyes, these compounds are intensely colored. They are produced industrially as dyes. Families Triarylmethane dyes can be grouped into families accordin ...

frequently used for monitoring the pH in aquaria.

Molecular biology

Cresol red can be used in many common molecular biology reactions in place of other loading dyes. Cresol Red does not inhibit ''Taq'' polymerase to the same degree as other common loading dyes.

Color marker

Cresol red can also be used as an

electrophoretic color marker An electrophoretic color marker is used to monitor the progress of agarose gel electrophoresis and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) since DNA, RNA, and most proteins are colourless. They are also referred to as tracking dyes, and are frequ ...

to monitor the process of

agarose gel electrophoresis Agarose gel electrophoresis is a method of gel electrophoresis used in biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, and clinical chemistry to separate a mixed population of macromolecules such as DNA or proteins in a matrix of agarose, one of ...

and

polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) is a technique widely used in biochemistry, forensic chemistry, genetics, molecular biology and biotechnology to separate biological macromolecules, usually proteins or nucleic acids, according to their ...

. In a 1% agarose gel, it runs approximately at the size of a 125 base pair (bp) DNA molecule (it depends on the concentration of buffer and other component).

Bromophenol blue Bromophenol blue (3′,3″,5′,5″-tetrabromophenolsulfonphthalein, BPB), albutest is used as a pH indicator, an electrophoretic color marker, and a dye. It can be prepared by slowly adding excess bromine to a hot solution of phenolsulfonp ...

and

xylene cyanol Xylene cyanol can be used as an electrophoretic color marker, or tracking dye, to monitor the process of agarose gel electrophoresis and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Bromophenol blue and orange G Orange G also called C.I. 16230, Aci ...

can also be used for this purpose.

References

{{Unreferenced, date =September 2007

External links

Cresol Red at OpenWetWare life scientists' wiki
Triarylmethane dyes Phenol dyes Benzoxathioles