Figure 4.

Agarose gel electrophoresis of plasmid DNA (100 mg/L) with increasing amounts of pyrite. DNA was exposed to pyrite for 4 hrs followed by centrifugation and sampling. The first lane is plasmid DNA, lane two: 6 g/L pyrite, lane three: 64 g/L pyrite, and lane four: 640 g/L pyrite. Positions of known strand lengths are given in kilo-bases on the right side of the figure. Similar to the RNA gel electrophoresis experiment, smaller DNA fragments move faster downward on the gel when a voltage is applied and the light intensity roughly correlates to quantity. The experiment was conducted in the presence of O₂.