**2. Agarose**

Agarose is a kind of carbohydrate macromolecules (polysaccharides), also known as a kind of dietary fibers. Agarose is purified from a certain red seaweed *Rhodophyta*. Polysaccharides from *Rhodophyta* mainly consist of agarose and agaropectin. Agaropectin is not capable of forming gels and has to be removed as impurities from the agarose/agaropectin mixture. The quality of agarose depends on such purification steps, and these steps push up agarose commercially much expensive.
