A green fluorescent dye with a novel DNA binding mechanism improves signal-to-noise in different DNA amplification assays.

Enhancing data collection from emulsion PCR reactions: three case studies

The COVID-19 pandemic is still with us. Biomedical innovation has rallied to address that pressing concern while continuing to tackle broader research challenges.

Researchers aim to unravel the molecular mechanisms by which a single genotype gives rise to diverse castes in eusocial organisms.

Photo: Ori Fragman, Hebrew University Hordeum spontaneum, the plant studied for BARE-1 retroelements. With genome sequences arriving almost as regularly as the morning paper, the public's attention is focused on genes--new genes to protect crops against pests; rogue genes that make bacteria resistant to antibiotics; faulty genes that, if fixed, could cure diseases such as muscular dystrophy. What many people don't realize is that genes account for only part of an organism's DNA, and in many c

The human genome is much like the American West of the 1850s: Everyone wants a piece of the pie. Similar to gold prospectors of 150 years ago, biotech and pharmaceutical companies, and even universities, are frantically searching for the nuggets of gold that will help them find the mother lode—a gene whose function is sufficiently marketable to make all of the preliminary research worthwhile. Companies that do strike gold get to introduce new classes of drugs to the market. Others hope to

Courtesy of David Hill, ART Reproductive Center Inc.Two separated blastomeres subjected to FISH analysis to check the chromosomes. In early October, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) made headlines when a Colorado couple used assisted reproductive technology (ART) to have a baby named Adam, whose umbilical cord stem cells could cure his six-year-old sister Molly's Fanconi anemia.1 When Adam Nash was a ball of blastomere cells, researchers at the Reproductive Genetics Institute at Illinois

Bacteria that live in the digestive tracts of animals may influence the adaptive trajectories of their hosts.

Genomics is slowly but surely moving off center stage, replaced by proteomics. Though proteomics is a young field that hasn't fully found its stride, two new developments provide glimpses of the future. At the end of February, attendees of the Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI) Genome Tri-Conference 2002 in Santa Clara, Calif., got their first glimpse of the Protein Atlas of the Human Genome™. Developed by Abingdon, UK-based Confirmant Ltd.—a joint venture of Abingdon, UK-based Ox

By Jeffrey M. Perkel Surpassing the Law of Averages How to expose the behaviors of genes, RNA, proteins, and metabolites in single cells. By necessity or convenience, almost everything we know about biochemistry and molecular biology derives from bulk behavior: From gene regulation to Michaelis-Menten kinetics, we understand biology in terms of what the “average” cell in a population does. But, as Jonathan Weissman of the University of Califo