Scientists studying a protein's function frequently start with the gene that encodes it. "You want to know what a protein does at the biochemical, cellular, physiological, and organismal levels," says Marc Vidal, assistant professor of genetics at Harvard University and research associate at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. "To do that, you need to express this protein under many different conditions using the region of the gene that encodes it, and that's the open reading frame--the ORF." With two new programs from Carlsbad, Calif.-based Invitrogen, researchers can now purchase ORF clones.
Invitrogen's Ultimate™ ORF Clone Collection consists of about 4,400 human and 2,800 mouse ORF clones, and climbing. "We are constantly expanding this collection," says Tanya Boyaniwsky, manager for Invitrogen's clone collections. Eventually, the company hopes to offer ORF clones for every human gene, plus all single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and splice variants.
To keep track of all this information, Invitrogen ...
