Today, many different methods of visualizing nucleic acids in gel electrophoresis are used, such as radioactivity, fluorescent labels, and post-electrophoric staining with methylene blue, ethidium bromide, or Carolina blue. However, recent research shows that cresyl violet is useful, not only for histological staining, but also exhibits for staining of nucleic acids on polyacrylamide gels. Specifically, cresyl violet distinguishes between single-stranded RNA and DNA with red/magenta and blue bands, respectively. Visible spectrophometry confirms the difference between the nucleotides and supports the initial color observations.