Ruthenium (II) tris‐bathophenanthroline disulfonate is well suitable for Tris‐Glycine PAGE but not for Bis‐Tris gels

Pre-cast bis(2-hydroxyethyl)iminotris(hydroxymethyl)methane (Bis-Tris) gels have proven to be very suitable for pre-fractionation for LC-MS/MS analysis due to high reliability and long stability. To visualize proteins within gels fluorescence dyes proved to be a good tradeoff between sensitivity and MS-compatibility. The custom-made ruthenium dye represents a low-cost alternative regarding fluorescence-based protein visualization with high sensitivity. We demonstrate, that this dye is incompatible with Bis-Tris gels, while using Tris-Glycine gels a competitive sensitivity to commercially available stains can be achieved.