M. luteus can be found in many places such as the human skin, water, dust, and soil. Micrococcus is generally thought of as harmless bacterium, but there have been rare cases of Micrococcus infections in people with compromised immune systems, as occurs with HIV patients.
Therefore when used in gel electrophoresis, markers effectively provide a logarithmic scale by which to estimate the size of the other fragments (providing the fragment sizes of the marker are known). Protein, DNA, and RNA markers with pre-determined fragment sizes and concentrations are commercially available.
Gel electrophoresis is a technique used to separate DNA fragments according to their size. DNA samples are loaded into wells (indentations) at one end of a gel, and an electric current is applied to pull them through the gel. DNA fragments are negatively charged, so they move towards the positive electrode.