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Spectrophotometry is a technology that has long been considered mature, and advances in instrumentation tend to focus on fine-tuning the technical details, such as...

Kinases are finally getting the recognition they deserve. Yes, there are a lot of them -- and they are essential for normal cellular functioning. However, there remains a relative dearth of information about their seemingly endless...

Genotyping can be accomplished using a number of different tools, including PCR, sequencing or hybridization to microarrays or beads. Which tool you choose will depend...

What you need is a peptide, but not just any peptide, a specific peptide -- your specific peptide. Whether that peptide is short or long, contains unadulterated amino acids or...

As more and more new assays are successfully adapted for high throughput screening, the overall range of microplate-based assays has become broader. In addition to traditional fields such as molecular biology, proteomics, and drug discovery and development, microplate instrumentation is showing up in...

There's no denying the small, non-coding regulatory molecules called microRNAs are hot. Implicated everywhere from floral development to oncogenesis, microRNAs account for 6500 references in PubMed, all but a few hundred of them...

Gene expression studies have deepened our understanding of important cellular functions. However, they often assume that cells of a particular type are homogeneous – and this is not necessarily the case. “Just like people, even genetically identical cells...

Protein expression, once the province of specialized proteomics laboratories, is now a versatile tool used in many disciplines within the life sciences. Advances in genomics have generated increased interest in functional...

Have you worked in a lab long enough to remember taking a Polaroid shot of your gel, and taping it into your lab notebook? Gel documentation has since become much more...

As the technology landscape shifts, needs in the area of PCR cloning are shifting with it. Next generation sequencing platforms are displacing PCR cloning applications for sequencing, and there is a greater need for vectors able to clone...

Don't look now – actually, do! – but something may be lurking in your cell culture. Microscopically invisible, impervious to most common antibiotics, and causing no obvious changes to your culture media, a bacterial contaminant may be covertly wreaking havoc...

Taq DNA Polymerase, an enzyme that catalyzes the incorporation of dNTPs into DNA, is one of the most commonly used polymerases in molecular biology. Though it lacks proofreading ability, and other polymerases have since been...

Let’s face it: cells simply didn’t evolve to live in isolation, or even in monolayers, in little plastic dishes. How relevant are our experiments on primary cells or cultured cell lines? While we are far from answering this question completely, we do know...

The use of cell culture in clinical drug development is increasing rapidly due to the advancement of high content analysis techniques and increased large biomolecular therapies. Cell culture consumable requirements for clinical development are more rigorous than for pure research, and a few areas of unmet need remain. These needs include improved plates and wells...

Nanotechnology: the science of small. Can you imagine nanocars that drive with rotating buckyball wheels, delivering drugs or other reagents to specific parts of your brain? Though this isn’t possible yet, it is a scenario whose time will come. Already, nanotechnology researchers can design...

Some applications call for DNA – genotyping and sequencing, say – and some call for RNA (e.g. Northern blots). But some applications call for a mix. Transcript cloning and sequencing, expression analysis – these applications require as input DNA stand-ins for...

Customer service and support can make a crucial difference in otherwise comparable products and technologies. When the products serve the scientific research market, customer service takes on a new meaning. Not only do customers require guidance in using and troubleshooting...

When you want to do an important task carefully, it’s best to slow down, right? Not if you’re an automated instrument that handles liquid samples in a lab. Research is demanding faster liquid handling systems, especially for screening...

The entire foundation of modern molecular biology is predicated on a single supposition: That it is possible to deliver nucleic acids to cells. From reporter gene assays to RNAi, knockout mice to...

How many cells are in your sample? There are a number of different ways to answer that question, from manual counting through a microscope to sophisticated flow cytometry instrumentation. With cell number becoming...

Beam me up, Scotty? We’re not quite there yet, but today scientists are using lasers to cut, capture, and even catapult single cells and pieces of tissue. Laser capture microdissection (LCM) uses inverted or upright microscopes, ultraviolet (UV) or infrared (IR) lasers, and tissue from...

RNAi technology has advanced far beyond the speculative phase, and researchers are looking for higher quality siRNA in greater quantities and wider gene coverage than ever before. Much of the spike in demand comes from RNA interference drug screens for drug target identification or validation. Large scale screens often follow...

Among the many justifications for the Human Genome Project was the promise of personalized medicine. By sequencing the human genome, the rationale went, scientists could begin to suss out how it varies...

Cytokines are a large family of molecules that regulate the immune system. They are created in response to a stimulus such as inflammation and deliver messages that regulate growth and differentiation of immune cells. Cytokines can be therapeutic targets for drug...

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) seem like a great idea at first – just use recombinant DNA technology to add or replace a gene with another gene. With such targeted modifications, we could make our...

A good software package can make the simplest tasks even simpler (like converting an A₂₆₀ reading into a DNA concentration), and of course, it can make very complex...

Genetics moves at a dizzying pace these days. Research journals trumpet new genetic associations almost daily for everything from disease predisposition to drug responses to physical traits. As of Oct. 6, 2009, the National Human Genome Research Institute's Catalog of Published Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) lists...

Using antibodies to detect specific proteins is central to many life science disciplines – especially in a field such as neuroscience, where identification of signaling molecules is so important. “Although immunodetection is a relatively old and solid...

Without ion channels, we would cease to move, think, or breathe—hence their involvement in many diseases and their attractiveness as drug targets. Indeed, recent activities in the development of drugs that target ion channels have increased our understanding of...

Cell adhesion assays measure adhesion between cells or between a cell and a surface or extracellular matrix. The most basic assay might involve plating cells onto a surface, washing the cells after time has passed, and observing the number...