Maybe if you placed the straw horizontally in a tray and filled the tray so that only half of the straw was filled with gel horizontally.
That's a great idea! Definitely worth a shot when we try this for PAGE. (I haven't worked with polyacrylamide yet, but the idea totally makes sense.) We could try it out now with agarose and DNA, too, using methylene blue.
On the UV transparency issue: not sure, but that doesn't strike me as a showstopper, as there are gel stains you can add to the warm agarose that work just as well with blue light as they do with UV.
Re: imaging
That's a great idea! Definitely worth a shot when we try this for PAGE. (I haven't worked with polyacrylamide yet, but the idea totally makes sense.) We could try it out now with agarose and DNA, too, using methylene blue.
On the UV transparency issue: not sure, but that doesn't strike me as a showstopper, as there are gel stains you can add to the warm agarose that work just as well with blue light as they do with UV.