Cesium chloride, an inorganic compound, is an important source of cesium ions in a variety of applications.
Cesium chloride is typically used for density gradient work and for the purification of virus/phage, nucleic acids and nucleoproteins. It is used for the preparation of electrically conducting glasses, used to make solutions for the separation of RNA from DNA by density gradient centrifugation. Cesium chloride (CsCl) is commonly used in the separation of DNA and RNA. Procedures have been reported for the purification of closed circular DNA by equilibrium centrifugation in both continuous and discontinuous CsCl-ethidium bromide gradients. Subsequently, the CsCl can be removed from the DNA preparation by either dialysis or precipitation.