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.
Proteins are separated by charge in agarose because the pores of the gel are too large to sieve proteins. Gel electrophoresis can also be used for separation of nanoparticles. Gel electrophoresis uses a gel as an anticonvective medium and/or sieving medium during electrophoresis, the movement of a charged particle in an electrical field.