Hi John, Speaking as a practising molecular biologist, I can think of no routinely used procedure performed today involving radioactive molecules.
In fact, most if not all of the older hazardous reagents that were used a decade ago are easily replaceable now. Many mutagenic compounds like EtBr can be replaced with harmless and less cumbersome to manage alternatives, though equipment used to visualise the results may need to be updated to maintain resolution. One use of Radioactivity that used to be commonplace was in-situ hybridisations and protein or DNA blots, but these have been entirely replaced with flourescent alternatives by now. The only valid use of Radioactivity I've encountered that remains in reasonably mainstream use is mutation breeding for plants or the like, but even in this case one can use an X-ray machine instead of a radioactive source. I hope this helped! If you have questions about replacing particular reagents or protocols with less radioactive alternatives, I'd be happy to help look it up for you. -Cathal Garvey _______________________________________________ Methods mailing list [email protected] http://www.bio.net/biomail/listinfo/methods
