Agarose

Agarose, a natural polymer is obtained from sea algae. This neutral linear polysaccharide is made up of d-galactose and 3,6-anhydro-l-galactose. These are connected alternatively with the help of glycosidic bonds. Agarose has high significance in gel electrophoresis and gel chromatography.

Agarose has been used:

• as a component in the preparation of tumor tissue to embed the cell material
• in the sample preparation for quantum dot analysis
• in the preparation of agarose-solidified medium to study the effect of medium solidification on the culture of isolated ovules

Agarose is used as bioink, because of its characteristic properties such as, biocompatibility, mechanical strength and gelling ability at low temperature.

The following is a list of properties associated with our agaroses:
Sulfate content - used as an indicator of purity, since sulfate is the major ionic group present.
Gel strength - the force that must be applied to a gel to cause it to fracture.
Gel point - the temperature at which an aqueous agarose solution forms a gel as it cools. Agarose solutions exhibit hysteresis in the liquid-to-gel transition - that is, their gel point is not the same as their melting temperature.
Electroendosmosis (EEO) - a movement of liquid through the gel. Anionic groups in an agarose gel are affixed to the matrix and cannot move, but dissociable counter cations can migrate toward the cathode in the matrix, giving rise to EEO. Since electrophoretic movement of biopolymers is usually toward the anode, EEO can disrupt separations because of internal convection.